LIBRARY 

UNIVERSITY  OP 
CALIFORNIA 

SAN  oiteo 


LATER     ESSAYS 

1917-1920 


BY  THE  SAME  AUTHOR 

Four  Frenchwomen,  1890. 

Eighteenth-Century  Vignettes,  8  series,  1892-96. 

A  Paladin  of  Philanthropy,  &c.  1899. 

Side-Walk  Studies,  ]  902. 

Old  Kensington  Palace,  &c.,  1910. 

At  Prior  Park,  &c..  1912. 

Jtosalba's  Journal,  &c.,  1915. 

Also  Lives  of  Hogarth  Fielding.  Steele,  Goldsmith, 
Horace  Walpole,  Richardson  and  Fanny  Burney. 


THE    ABBE    EDGEWORTH. 

(1745-1807.) 


LATER    ESSAYS 

1917 — 1920 


BY 


AUSTIN   DOBSON 


HUMPHREY  MILFORD 
OXFORD    UNIVERSITY    PRESS 

LONDON       EDINBURGH       GLASGOW      COPENHAGEN 

NEW  YORK    TORONTO    MELBOURNE    CAPE  TOWN 

BOMBAY     CALCUTTA     MADRAS     SHANGHAI     PEKING 

1921 


PRINTED  BY   FREDERICK  HALL 

AT  THE  UNIVERSITY  PRESS 

OXFORD,  ENGLAND 


PREFATORY   NOTE 

THIS,  as  will  be  seen  from  the  list  at  the  back  of 
the  bastard  title,  adds  a  tenth  volume  to  the  writer's 
Studies,  mainly  in  the  Eighteenth  Century.  The 
essays  forming  the  present  instalment  appeared  in 
the  National  Review  between  September,  1917,  and 
July,  1920,  and  are  here  reprinted  under  the  standing 
permission  of  the  Editor.  A  few  items  have,  how- 
ever, been  added  to  the  closing  Causerie.  Of  these, 
'  Johnsoniana  '  and  '  Re-reading  '  originally  came 
out  in  The  Book  Monthly  ;  but  '  An  Old  Magazine  ' 
and  '  By  Way  of  Preface  '  are  now  published  for  the 
first  time. 

The  frontispiece  has  been  reproduced  by  Mr.  Emery 
Walker  from  the  portrait  of  the  Abbe  Edgeworth 
made  use  of  for  Sneyd  Edgeworth's  Memoirs  of  1815. 
It  was  engraved  in  stipple  by  Anthony  Cardon  and 
is  inscribed  '  De  St.  Aubyn  pinxt.' 

AUSTIN  DOBSON. 

EAIJNO, 

December,  1920. 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

EDWARDS'S     CANONS  OF  CRITICISM  1 

AN  EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY  HIPPOCRATES       .  25 

*  HERMES  '  HARRIS 46 

THE  JOURNEYS  OF  JOHN  HOWARD          .         .  70 

*  THE  LEARNED  MRS.  CARTER            ...  97 
THE  ABBfi  EDGEWORTH    .          .„                  .         .124 
A  CASUAL  CAUSERIE 151 

INDEX  .  174 


EDWARDS'S 
*  CANONS    OF   CRITICISM' 

POPE,  in  a  letter  to  Caryll,  speaks  of  having 
pictures  of  Dryden,  Milton,  Shakespeare,  &c., 
hung  about  his  room,  '  that  the  constant  remem- 
brance of  them  may  keep  him  always  humble '. 
To  what  extent  this  mental  antiseptic  protected 
him  when  in  1721-5  he  was  editing  the  last-named 
poet  is  unrecorded  ;  but  it  certainly  did  not  in  any 
way  influence  the  successor  and  collaborator  who 
'  revised  '  his  work  in  1747.  For  humility  was  by 
no  means  one  of  the  prominent  characteristics  of 
the  Reverend  and  learned  William  Warburton.  Of 
all  critics  he  was  certainly  the  most  '  robustious  ' ;  of 
all  commentators  the  most  dogmatic  and  domineer- 
ing ;  while  his  controversial  language  can  often  only 
be  described  as  insufferably  offensive.1  His  hetero- 
geneous erudition  was  admittedly  enormous  ;  but 
however  well  equipped  as  a  righting  polemic  and 
theologian,  his  literary  judgement  was  not  on  a  level 
with  his  pretensions.  His  conjectural  emendations 
of  Shakespeare  are  now  generally  discredited ;  but 
even  in  his  own  day,  when  the  study  of  Shakes- 
peare's text  was  still  in  leading-strings,  there  were 
not  wanting  readers  independent  enough  to  question 
the  decrees  of  the  self-constituted  legislator  whom 
his  parasites  extolled  as  an  intellectual  Colossus. 
One  of  the  most  vivacious  of  the  objectors  was 
Thomas  Edwards,  a  barrister,  of  whose  ironical 

1  It  was  of  Warburton  that  Bolingbroke  said  he  had  no 
desire  to  '  wrestle  with  a  chimney-sweeper  '  (Rogers's  Table- 
Talk,  1856,  p.  25). 

B 


2  LATER  ESSAYS 

Canons  of  Criticism  it  is  now  proposed  to  give  some 
account.  But  in  this  particular  instance  there  is 
so  much  more  to  be  said  of  the  work  and  its  origin 
than  of  the  writer  himself,  that  it  will  be  convenient 
to  reverse  the  customary  order  of  procedure  and 
begin  with  the  book.  And  this  course  is  the  more 
excusable  because  the  scanty  facts  of  Edwards's 
career  chiefly  concern  his  closing  years. 

In  1747,  when,  as  already  stated,  Warburton 
issued  his  eight-volume  edition  of  The  Works  of 
Shakespear,  he  had  but  four  predecessors  in  the 
editorial  field — Rowe,  Pope,  Theobald,  and  Han- 
mer.  First,  in  1709,  had  come  Nicholas  Rowe,  the 
playwright  and  Poet  Laureate,  with  the  earliest 
attempt  at  a  biography.  This,  the  standard  eigh- 
teenth-century life,  opportunely  garnered  much 
floating  tradition  ;  but  Rowe  did  little  or  nothing 
for  the  rectification  of  the  text.  To  him,  in  1725, 
succeeded  Pope,  more  literary,  but  less  practically 
equipped  in  stage-craft  and  in  what  he  contemp- 
tuously called  '  the  dull  duty  of  an  Editor  '.  As 
might  be  expected,  his  '  Preface  ',  full  no  doubt  of 
good  things,  is  the  most  memorable  part  of  his 
performance.  His  notes,  however,  were  sharply 
criticized  by  a  lesser  man,  Lewis  Theobald,  the 
typical  '  Codrus  '  of  English  verse,  so  '  distressed  ' 
as  to  be  traditionally  perpetuated  in  Hogarth's 
'  sky-parlour  'j1  yet  withal  scholar  and  critic  enough 
to  earn  for  himself  a  vindictive  pre-eminence  in 
the  Dunciad  as  the  predecessor  of  Colley  Gibber.  It 
was  Theobald  whose  '  lucky  guessing  ' — that  '  lucky 
guessing '  which  Jane  Austen  held  has  '  always 
some  talent  in  it ' — by  its  substitution  of  '  a'  babbled 
of  green  fields  '  for  the  old  version,  '  a  table  of  green 
fields,'  shed  parting  radiance  on  the  lifelike  death- 

1  The  '  Distressed  Poet '  is  supposed  to  represent  Theobald. 


EDWARDS'S  '  CANONS  OF  CRITICISM  '      3 

bed  of  Falstaff ;  and  this  was  by  no  means  Theobald's 
only  palpable  hit.  Moreover,  it  is  to  '  poor  Tibb's  ' 
credit  that  he  endeavoured  to  interpret  his  author's 
text  not  so  much  by  an  eighteenth-century  standard 
as  by  the  current  speech — '  the  obsolete  and  un- 
common phrases  ' — of  that  author's  contemporaries. 
Theobald  was  the  third  of  Warburton's  predecessors. 
The  fourth  (1743-4)  was  Sir  Thomas  Hanmer  of 
Mildenhall,  near  Newmarket  in  Suffolk,  a  cultivated 
country  gentleman,  who  had  been  a  dignified 
and  respected  Speaker  of  the  House  of  Commons. 
As  an  editor  he  seems  to  have  held  Goldsmith's 
rule  that  the  best  commentator  is  common  sense  ; 
and,  for  the  rest,  to  have  relied  on  the  typography 
of  the  Clarendon  Press  and  the  artful  aid  of  Frank 
Hayman's  weedy  designs,  as  translated  by  the 
*  sculptures  '  of  Gravelot.  Then,  at  length,  thought- 
fully trumpeted  beforehand  in  volume  ix  of  Birch's 
General  Dictionary  and  The  History  of  the  Works 
of  the  Learned,  came  the  announcement  of  '  a 
more  complete  and  accurate  edition  '  from  the  Rev. 
William  Warburton.  At  the  date  of  publication, 
May  1747, x  Warburton  had  not  been  long  married 
to  Miss  Gertrude  Tucker,  the  niece  of  Ralph  Allen 
of  Prior  Park,  and  had  recently  been  appointed  to 
the  preachership  of  Lincoln's  Inn  Chapel,  an  office 
which  had  been  procured  for  him  by  '  silver- 
tongued  '  Murray,  afterwards  Lord  Mansfield.  But 
he  was  already  famous  as  the  author  of  the  never- 
completed  Divine  Legation  of  Moses,  and  had 
established  himself  in  the  affection  of  Pope  by  his 

1  The  Works  of  Shakespear.  By  Mr.  Pope  and  Mr.  War- 
burton,  in  8  vols.  8vo,  price  £2  8s.  (Gentlemaii's  Magazine  for 
May  1747,  xvii.  252).  The  title  further  professed  to  give  the 
'  Genuine  Text '  as  '  restored  from  the  Blunders  of  the  first 
Editors,  and  the  Interpolations  of  the  two  Last '  (i.e.  Theobald 
and  Hanmer). 

B2 


4  LATER  ESSAYS 

adroit  vindication  of  the  nebulous  orthodoxy  of 
the  Essay  on  Man — a  work  which,  by  the  way,  he 
had  formerly  assailed.1  As  a  natural  consequence 
of  this  new  alliance,  Pope's  labours  on  Shakespeare 
had  assumed  an  exaggerated  value  in  his  eyes,  and 
on  his  title-page  he  figured  as  Pope's  coadjutor. 
But  when,  in  1747,  the  joint  result  at  last  appeared, 
Pope  was  dead. 

So  also,  for  the  matter  of  that,  were  Hanmer  and 
Theobald,  though — to  do  Warburton  justice — there 
is  no  reason  for  supposing  that  their  presence  or 
absence  on  this  planet  would  have  prevented  him 
from  abusing  them  to  the  full  of  his  bent.  This  he 
proceeded  to  do  in  his  '  Preface  '.  Both  of  them, 
if  we  are  to  believe  him,  had  made  unwarrantable 
use  of  his  material  :  '  The  One  [Theobald]  was 
recommended  to  me  as  a  poor  Man  ;  the  Other 
[Hanmer]  as  a  poor  Critic  :  and  to  each  of  them, 
at  different  times,  I  communicated  a  great  number 
of  Observations,  which  they  managed,  as  they 
saw  fit,  to  the  Relief  of  their  several  Distresses. 
As  to  Mr.  Theobald,  who  wanted  Money,  I  allowed 
him  to  print  what  I  gave  him  for  his  own  Advantage  : 
and  he  allowed  himself  in  the  Liberty  of  taking 
one  Part  for  his  own,  and  sequestering  another  for 
the  Benefit,  as  I  supposed,  of  some  future  Edition. 
But,  as  to  the  Oxford  Editor  [Hanmer],  who  wanted 
nothing  but  what  he  might  very  well  be  without, 
the  Reputation  of  a  Critic,  I  could  not  so  easily 
forgive  him  for  trafficking  with  my  Papers  without 
my  Knowledge  ;  and,  when  that  Project  fail'd, 
for  employing  a  number  of  my  Conjectures  in  his 
Edition  against  my  expressed  Desire  not  to  have 
that  Honour  done  unto  me.' 

There  is  more  to  the  same  effect ;  but  seeing  that 
1  Prior's  Life  of  Malone,  1860,  pp.  430-1. 


EDWARDS'S  '  CANONS  OF  CRITICISM  '     5 

Warburton's  own  biographer  candidly  confesses 
that  '  these  passages  contain  much,  we  fear,  that 
is  disingenuous,  not  to  say  false  ',*  it  is  only  waste 
of  time  to  discuss  them  ;  and  although  it  is  plain 
that  Warburton  had  personal  relations  with  both 
Theobald  and  Hanmer,  it  is  hopeless,  at  this  date, 
to  decide  exactly  how  much  he  lent  to,  or  borrowed 
from,  either  of  them.2  But — at  the  risk  of  antici- 
pating— it  is  instructive  to  contrast  here  with 
Warburton's  malevolent  and  skilfully  generalized 
indictment  of  his  forerunners,  honest  old  Johnson's 
treatment  of  Warburton  himself  when,  eighteen 
years  later,  Warburton,  in  his  turn,  came  up  for 
judgement  as  a  Shakespeare  commentator.  It  is 
true  that  Warburton  was  alive  when  Johnson 
wrote  ;  and  that,  with  Voltaire,  Johnson  rightly 
recognized  the  obligation  of  '  tenderness  to  living 
reputation  '.  He  also  respected  Warburton's  extra- 
ordinary learning.  '  The  table  is  always  full,  Sir,' 
he  said  of  the  miscellaneous  bill  of  fare  provided  in 
the  Divine  Legation.  '  He  brings  things  from  the 
north  and  the  south,  and  from  every  quarter.'  And 
he  also  cherished  a  praiseworthy  gratitude  to  War- 
burton  for  a  commendatory  word  respecting  some 
of  his  own  tentative  and  unfriended  efforts  in 
Shakespeare  criticism.3  But,  although,  for  these 
reasons,  his  deliverance  is  perhaps  a  trifle  laboured, 
especially  when  compared  with  the  weighty  passages 
on  editorial  futility  by  which  it  is  succeeded,  these 
considerations  did  not  prevent  him  from  writing 
what  must  always  be  regarded  as  the  last  word  on 

1  Watson's  Life  of  Warburton,  1863,  pp.  300-1. 

2  '  Such  improvements  as  he  [Warburton]  introduced  are 
mainly  borrowed  from  Theobald  and  Hanmer '   (Life  of 
Shakespeare,  by  Sir  Sidney  Lee,  1898,  p.  318). 

*  Miscellaneous  Observations  on  the  Tragedy  of  Macbeth, 
1745. 


6  LATER  ESSAYS 

Warburton's  Shakespear  :  '  The  original  and  pre- 
dominant errour  of  his  [Warburton's]  commentary, 
is  acquiescence  in  his  first  thoughts  ;  that  pre- 
cipitation which  is  produced  by  consciousness  of 
quick  discernment ;  and  that  confidence  which 
presumes  to  do,  by  surveying  the  surface,  what 
labour  only  can  perform,  by  penetrating  the  bottom. 
His  notes  exhibit  sometimes  perverse  interpreta- 
tions, and  sometimes  improbable  conjectures  ;  he 
at  one  time  gives  the  author  more  profundity  of 
meaning  than  the  sentence  admits,  and  at  another 
discovers  absurdities  where  the  sense  is  plain  to 
every  other  reader.  But  his  emendations  are 
likewise  often  happy  and  just ;  and  his  interpreta- 
tion of  obscure  passages  learned  and  sagacious. 
Of  his  notes  I  have  commonly  rejected  those  against 
which  the  general  voice  of  the  publick  has  exclaimed, 
or  which  their  own  incongruity  immediately  con- 
demns and  which,  I  suppose,  the  author  himself 
would  desire  to  be  forgotten.  Of  the  rest,  to  part 
I  have  given  the  highest  approbation,  by  inserting 
the  offered  reading  in  the  text ;  part  I  have  left 
to  the  judgement  of  the  reader,  as  doubtful,  though 
specious,  and  part  I  have  censured  without  reserve, 
but  I  am  sure  without  bitterness  of  malice,  and, 
I  hope,  without  wantonness  of  insult.' 1 

This  restrained,  and  even  indulgent  judgement 
would  probably  at  no  time  have  satisfied  the 
inordinate  vanity  of  Warburton,  least  of  all  when, 
in  1765,  he  first  read  it  in  type,  having  in  the 
interim  shouldered  his  way  through  various  prefer- 
ments to  the  Bishopric  of  Gloucester;  and,  pre- 
sumably, long  since  spent  the  five  hundred  pounds 
(more  than  Johnson  or  Pope  received)  which  he 
had  extracted  from  Tonson  for  the  copyright. 
1  Johnson's  Works,  1810,  ii.  177-8. 


EDWARDS'S  '  CANONS  OF  CRITICISM  '     7 

With  commendable  prudence,  he  said  nothing  in 
public  ;  but  he  grumbled  in  writing  to  his^henchman 
Hurd  and  another  correspondent  about  the  '  folly  ' 
and  '  malignity '  of  '  this  Johnson '  who  had  ven- 
tured to  question  his  authority  as  a  Shakespeare 
commentator.  Of  course,  by  this  time,  Johnson's 
praise  or  dispraise  could  matter  little  to  Warburton, 
whose  '  chimerical  conceits  '  (the  phrase  is  Malone's) 
had  already  been  sufficiently  exposed  by  humbler 
men.  One  of  these  was  Dr.  Zachary  Grey,  the 
superabundant  notes  to  whose  edition  of  Butler's 
Hudibras  Warburton  had  characterized  as  an 
'  execrable  heap  of  nonsense  ',  though  he  himself 
had  contributed  to  them.  Another  was  John  Upton, 
later  the  editor  of  Spenser,  who,  with  special 
reference  to  Warburton,  put  forth  a  series  of 
Observations  on  Shakespeare.  But  the  most  memor- 
able of  the  group  was  Thomas  Edwards,  to  whom  we 
owe  The  Canons  of  Criticism. 

Although  there  is  a  legend  that  Edwards  had 
once  met  Warburton  in  Allen's  library  at  Prior  Park, 
and  had  successfully  confuted  him  (before  his 
wife)  about  a  passage  from  a  Greek  author,  con- 
cerning which  Warburton  had  manifestly  relied  on 
a  French  translation,  there  is  no  ground  for  supposing 
that  Edwards  was  actuated  by  any  hostile  feeling. 
In  fact,  not  long  after  the  Canons  had  appeared, 
he  wrote  that  he  did  not  know  Warburton  personally, 
which,  even  if  there  were  not  other  discrepancies, 
would  be  fatal  to  the  story.  Edwards  was  not 
a  professed  critic  ;  indeed,  as  far  as  we  are  aware, 
though  liberally  educated,  he  had  never  been  either 
at  a  public  school  or  a  university.  But  he  was 
a  natural  scholar,  devoted  in  particular  to  Spenser, 
Milton,  and  Shakespeare,  whom  he  had  studied 
in  order  to  comprehend  their  meaning  rather  than 


8  LATER  ESSAYS 

to  write  about  them.  Warburton's  fantastic  and 
needless  variations  honestly  roused  in  him  that 
righteous  indignation — the  '  noble  anger  '  of  King 
Lear — which  Bishop  Butler  has  declared  to  be  '  not 
only  innocent,  but  a  generous  movement  of  mind  '. 
And  Warburton,  in  his  full-blown  arrogance,  had 
afforded  him  an  excellent  opportunity  for  retort — 
nay,  had  even  indicated  the  very  form  it  should 
take.  He  had  once  intended — his  '  Preface  ' 
loftily  announced — to  have  given  his  readers 
'  a  body  of  Canons,  for  literal  Criticism  ',  drawn  out 
in  form  ;  as  well  such  as  concern  the  art  in  general 
as  those  that  arise  from  the  nature  and  circumstances 
of  the  author's  works  in  particular  ;  but  these  uses — 
he  complacently  added — might  be  well  supplied  by 
what  he  had  occasionally  said  on  the  subject  in 
the  course  of  his  remarks.  He  had  also  designed 
to  give  '  a  general  alphabetic  Glossary  '  of  peculiar 
terms  ;  but  as  those  were  explained  in  their  proper 
places,  there  seemed  the  less  occasion  for  such  an 
'  Index  '.  There  could  be  no  more  inviting  provoca- 
tion to  the  profane  than  this  pronouncement,  and 
Edwards  availed  himself  of  it.  He  forthwith  set  to 
work  to  frame  a  burlesque  code  of  Canons,  deduced 
directly  from  Warburton's  notes,  with  illustrations 
drawn  from  that  writer's  emendations.  To  these 
he  subjoined  a  Glossary  based — of  course  from  his 
own  point  of  view — on  Warburton's  indications. 
His  essay,  first  issued  in  April  1748,  by  M.  Cooper 
of  Paternoster  Row,  as  a  shilling  pamphlet,1  was 
advertised  as  a  Supplement  to  Mr.  Warburton's 
Edition  of  Shakespear  '  collected  from  the  Notes 

1  Gentleman's  Magazine  for  April  1748  (xviii.  192).  The 
date  satisfactorily  disposes  of  the  allegation  that  Edwards 
had  hindered  the  sale  of  Warburton's  book,  since  that  book 
had  appeared  nearly  a  twelvemonth  earlier  (Canons  oj 
Criticism,  3rd  ed.,  1750,  p.  10) 


EDWARDS'S  '  CANONS  OF  CRITICISM  '    9 

in  that  celebrated  Work,  and  proper  to  be  bound 
up  with  it  ' — the  authorship  being  ascribed  to 
a  '  Gentleman  of  Lincoln's  Inn  '.  Later  issues 
changed  the  title  to  The  Canons  of  Criticism  and 
Glossary,  &c. 

It  would  be  superfluous  to  reprint  the  twenty- 
five  Canons  which  Edwards  prefixed  to  his  pamphlet, 
as  they  are  all  much  on  the  same  lines  ;  but  a  few 
may  be  reproduced  as  specimens.  No.  I  runs  : 

A  Professed  Critic  has  a  right  to  declare,  that  his 
Author  wrote  whatever  He  thinks  he  ought  to  have 
written  ;  with  as  much  positiveness,  as  if  He  had 
been  at  his  Elbow. 

No.  II.  He  has  a  right  to  alter  any  passage 
which  He  does  not  understand. 

No.  IV.  Where  he  does  not  like  an  expression, 
and  yet  cannot  mend  it  ;  He  may  abuse  his  Author 
for  it. 

No.  V.  Or  He  may  condemn  it,  as  a  foolish 
interpolation. 

No.  VII.  He  may  find  out  obsolete  words,  or 
coin  new  ones  ;  and  put  them  in  the  place  of  such, 
as  He  does  not  like,  or  does  not  understand. 

No.  IX.  He  may  interpret  his  Author  so  ;  as  to 
make  him  mean  directly  contrary  to  what  He  says. 

These  are  some  only  of  the  Canons,  but  a  small 
handsel  will  suffice.  To  borrow  the  memorable 
words  of  Captain  Cuttle's  oracular  friend,  '  The 
bearing  of  these  observations  lays  in  the  application 
on  them  '  rather  than  in  any  gnomic  neatness  they 
possess  ;  and  this  application  Edwards  goes  on  to 
supply  with  considerable  gusto.  In  this  respect 
one  may  draw  on  him  more  liberally.  Some  of  the 
examples  he  adduces  are  certainly  marvels  of 
editorial  ineptitude.  Thus  when  Othello  (Act  III, 


10  LATER  ESSAYS 

sc.  iii)  speaks  of  '  the  ear-piercing  fife  '  (now  almost 
as  ancient  a  friend  as  the  journalistic  '  welkin  '), 
Warburton  would  substitute  '  th'  fear-'spersing 
fife  ',  on  the  unaccountable  ground  that  '  piercing 
the  ear  is  not  an  effect  on  the  Iwarers  '.  His  own 
ear  must  have  been  lamentably  at  fault  since,  in 
another  place,  he  proposes  to  read,  for  the  '  Whoso 
draws  a  sword,  'tis  present  death  '  of  1  Henry  VI, 
Act  III,  sc.  iv,  the  unspeakable  '  Whoso  draws 
a  sword  i'  th'  presence  't's  death  ' — a  line  which, 
if  we  fail  to  follow  Edwards  in  thinking  that  it 
seems  '  penned  for  Cadmus  when  in  the  state  of 
a  serpent ',  certainly  proves  that  the  '  Professed 
Critic  ',  with  the  modern  parodist,  liked 

to  dock  the  smaller  parts-o'-speech, 
As  we  curtail  the  already  cur-tailed  cur.1 
Another  entirely  unnecessary  alteration  is  where 
the  Fool  in  King  Lear  says  (Act  III,  sc.  ii)  :  '  I'll 
speak  a  prophecy,  or  e'er  I  go.'  This  Warburton, 
on  the  pitiful  pretence  that  '  or  e'er  I  go  is  not 
English  ',  amends  into  :  '  I'll  speak  a  proph'cy, 
or  two,  e'er  I  go.'  It  is  not  necessary,  at  present, 
to  give,  as  Edwards  does,  and  mostly  from  the 
Bible,  a  page  of  illustrations  defending  the  use  of 
the  locution  '  or  e'er  '.  It  may,  however,  be  urged, 
perhaps  not  unreasonably,  that  Warburton's 
emendations  are  more  than  a  hundred  and  seventy 
years  old  ;  and  that  he  wrote  before  Bartlett's  and 
Mrs.  Cowden-Clarke's  indispensable  Concordances, 
to  say  nothing  of  the  glossaries  of  Dyce  and  his 
successors.2  And  there  is  something,  too,  in  War- 
burton's  complaint  to  a  sympathetic  friend  that 
'  to  discover  the  corruption  in  an  author's  text, 

1  Calverley's  Fly  Leaves,  2nd  ed.,  1872,  p.  113. 
*  E.  g.  the  excellent  Shakespeare  Glossary  of  Mr.  C.  T. 
Onions,  1911. 


EDWARDS'S  '  CANONS  OF  CRITICISM  '    11 

and  by  a  happy  sagacity  to  restore  it  to  sense,  is 
no  easy  task  :  and  when  the  discovery  is  made, 
then  to  cavil  at  the  conjecture,  to  propose  an 
equivalent,  and  defend  nonsense,  by  producing 
out  of  the  thick  darkness  it  occasions  a  weak  and 
faint  glimmering  of  sense  ...  is  the  easiest,  as  well 
as  dullest,  of  all  literary  efforts  '.1  That  is  so, 
unquestionably,  when,  in  both  cases,  the  result  is 
naught.  Who,  however,  would  seek  to  better 
'  a'  babbled  of  green  fields  '  !  Here,  in  truth,  the 
critic  is  '  on  a  level  with  the  author  '.  But  where  is 
the  '  happy  sagacity  ' — the  curiosa  felicitas — of 
Warburton's  '  enlard  '  for  '  enlarge  ' 2  in  the  '  and 
doth  enlarge  his  rising  '  (2  Henry  IV,  Act  I,  sc.  i), 
a  perfectly  legitimate  alternative  for  '  increase  his 
army  '.  Or  where  again  is  the  necessity  for  con- 
verting '  denier  '  into  '  taniere  '  in  '  My  dukedom 
to  a  beggarly  denier  '  (Richard  III,  Act  I,  sc.  ii), 
odds — it  may  be  noted  in  passing — as  intelligibly 
extreme  as  the  eighteenth-century  '  All  Lombard 
Street  to  a  China  orange  '.  '  Denier  '  is  the  twelfth 
part  of  a  sou  ;  but  '  taniere  ',  even  if,  as  Warburton 
says,  it  may  be  taken  to  mean  '  a  hut  or  cave  ' 
(which  is  by  no  means  its  ordinary  signification), 
is  a  suggestion  so  far-fetched  as  scarcely  to  be 
worth  the  carriage.  But  perhaps  the  most  astound- 
ing of  Warburton's  amendments  is  his  correction 
of  the  much-discussed  couplet  in  Amiens's  song 
(As  You  Like  It,  Act  II,  sc.  vii) : 

Thy  tooth  is  not  so  keen, 

Because  thou  art  not  seen. 

Warburton  holds  that  '  Without  doubt,  Shakespeare 
wrote  "Because  thou  art  not  sheen"'  (obsolete 

1  Letters  from  a  late  Eminent  Prelate,  2nd  ed.,  1809,  p.  368. 

2  Shakespeare  himself  uses  '  enlard  '  in  its  sense  of '  fatten' 
in  Trailus  and  Cressida,  Act  II,  sc.  iii. 


12  LATER  ESSAYS 

for  '  shining  ').  This  is  more  than  '  midsummer 
madness  ',  it  is  sheer  academic  amentia,1  and  instead 
of  making  matters  clearer,  serves  solely  to  obscure 
what  is  obvious. 

These  illustrations  might  easily  be  extended  by 
going  farther  afield.  But,  at  this  time  of  the  day, 
it  is  not  necessary  to  prove  Warburton's  self- 
sufficient  perversity  up  to  the  hilt.  One  of  the 
blunders  which  aroused  the  mirth  of  Edwards,  and 
the  discovery  of  which  disturbed  his  victim  much 
as  a  banderilla  might  be  supposed  to  irritate  a  bull, 
was,  it  is  possible,  no  more  than  an  error  of  the  press, 
though  a  most  inconvenient  one.  In  referring  to 
Cinthio's  Hecatommithi,  a  Shakespearean  source, 
Pope  had  used  the  contraction,  '  Dec.  8,  Nov.  5,' 
which  Warburton's  over-zealous  printer  had  ampli- 
fied into  '  December  8,  November  5  ',  whereas,  if 
expanded  at  all,  it  should  have  been  '  Decade  8, 
Novel  5  '  ;  and  matters  were  not  improved  when, 
to  Warburton's  angry  retort,  Edwards  gleefully 
rejoined  that  a  mistake  of  the  same  kind  had  been 
made  in  speaking  of  a  quotation  from  the  Faerie 
Queene.  There  is,  however,  no  lack  of  real  aberra- 
tion in  Warburton's  notes  ;  and  if  our  object  were 
to  do  more  than  justify  the  protests  of  Edwards, 
it  would,  as  we  have  said,  be  easy  to  '  enlard  '  the 
schedule.  What,  for  instance,  could  be  the  possible 
good  of  discussing  the  following  senseless  comment 
on  the  '  prayers  from  preserved  souls  '  of  Measure 
for  Measure  (Act  II,  sc.  ii) — '  The  metaphor  is 
taken  from  fruits,  preserved  in  sugar  '  ?  Or,  from 
examples  under  Canon  II  :  '  He  [the  Critic]  has 

1  The  most  intelligible  variation  is  Staunton's  '  Because 
thou  art  foreseen  '.  Surely,  however,  no  revision  is  required. 
One  need  not  '  swear  to  the  truth  of  a  song ' — even  by 
Shakespeare. 


EDWARDS'S  '  CANONS  OF  CRITICISM  '     13 

a  right  to  alter  any  passage  which  He  does  not 
understand,'  the  following,  '  The  Fixure  of  her  eye 
has  motion  in  't  '  (Winter's  Tale,  Act  V,  sc.  iii, 
where  Hermione  is  personating  a  statue)  ?  Says 
Warburton  :  '  This  is  sad  nonsense.  We  should 
read  "  The  Fissure  of  her  eye  ",  i.  e. — the  Socket  ' — 
a  suggestion  which  might  have  come  from  the 
Damasippus  of  Horace.  It  is  sufficient  to  say  that 
fissure  means  a  '  split  '  and  not  a  '  socket  ',  while 
'  fixure  '  is  good  Shakespearean  for  '  fixedness  '. 
Thisv  trick  of  replacing  Shakespeare's  word  by 
another  that  resembles  it,  is  part  of  Warburton's 
modus  operandi,  though  he  may  have  caught  the 
device  from  the  '  babbled  '  for  '  table  '  of  Theobald. 
Thus,  he  puts,  not  only  '  sheen  '  for  '  seen',  but 
'  wing  '  for  '  sing  ',  '  hymn  '  for  '  him  ',  '  mew '  for 
'  few  ',  '  blending  '  for  '  bending  ',  '  hallows  '  for 
'  allows  ',  '  tallies  '  for  '  dallies  ',  '  vowels  '  for 
'  bowels  ',  and  so  forth — variations  which,  in  every 
case,  serve  simply  to  support  Johnson's  preference 
for  the  older  readings,  and  enforce  his  position  that 
conjecture,  though  it  be  sometimes  unavoidable, 
should  not  be  '  wantonly  nor  licentiously  indulged  '.1 
Warburton's  notes  are,  in  truth,  a  lucky-bag  of 
lapses,  into  which  one  may  plunge  anywhere  with 
the  certitude  of  finding  something  to  rival  that 
real,  or  imagined,  pedagogue  (from  Boeotia)  who 
proposed,  in  lieu  of  the  authorized  version,  to  read 
'  stones  in  the  running  brooks,  Sermons  in  books  ' ;  2 
or  that  other  egregious  wiseacre,  fabled  by  Mr. 
Punch,  who  made  the  remarkable  discovery  that 

1  Of  course,  Warburton — as  Johnson  says — sometimes 
scores.  But  his  failures  are  far  more  frequent  than  his 
successes  ;  and  it  is  with  his  failures  that  Edwards  is 
concerned. 

4  This,  I  learn,  is  wrong.  The  emendation  is  said  to  have 
really  originated  with  a  too  literal  type-setter. 


14  LATER  ESSAYS 

Yorick  was  Hamlet's  father  because,  in  handling 
Yorick's  skull,  Hamlet  said  '  Pah  !  ' 

To  give  an  idea  of  Warburton's  anger  and 
astonishment  at  the  onslaught  of  Edwards  would 
require  a  string  of  those  preparatory  similes  which 
Fielding  employs  so  effectively  to  introduce  a 
thunderbolt.  Warburton  had  no  doubt  counted  on 
unqualified  approbation  ;  or,  at  the  worst  (if  there 
could  be  a  worst  !),  on  the  conventional  homage 
usually  accorded  to  eminent  personages  who  take 
up  unfamiliar  tasks  under  pretence  of  pastime. 
But  that  the  author  of  the  Divine  Legation  should 
be  '  scotched  and  notched  like  a  carbonado  ' l  by 
a  nameless  nobody — a  mere  Inns  of  Court  amateur — 
was  a  thing  to  make  angels  weep.  His  indignation 
was  irrepressible  ;  and  he  exhibited  his  resentment 
in  the  most  unworshipful  manner.  Public  reply 
was,  of  course,  out  of  the  question — probably  he 
felt  that  Edwards  was  far  too  '  cunning  of  fence  '. 
But  he  poured  contempt  on  him  privately  in  all 
companies  ;  and,  as  opportunity  offered,  inserted 
spiteful  and  irrelevant  passages  about  him  in  the 
notes  to  Pope  on  which  he  was  engaged.  In  the 
Essay  on  Criticism,  referring  to  Edwards  by  name, 
he  spoke  of  him  disdainfully  as  a  critic  having 
neither  parts  nor  learning,  a  '  Fungoso  '  2  of  Lin- 
coln's Inn  ;  and  in  the  fourth  book  of  the  Dunciad, 
taking  advantage  of  Pope's  line  about  the  children 
of  Dullness  : 

Who  study  Shakespeare  at  the  Inns  of  Court 

1  Warburton's  definition  of  '  carbonado ',  after  Pope,  is 
perversely  characteristic.  He  says  it  should  be  '  carbinado  ', 
and  that  '  carbinadoed  '  means  marked  with  wounds  made 
by  a  carabine  ! 

1  *  Fungoso '  is  one  of  the  characters  in  Ben  Jonson's 
Every  Man  mil  of  His  Humour.  Pope  mentioned  him  in  the 
Essay  on  Criticism. 


EDWARDS'S  '  CANONS  OF  CRITICISM  '  15 

(a  line  which  had  assuredly  no  connexion  whatever 
with  Edwards),  he  delivered  himself  of  a  scurrilous, 
and,  at  this  date,  rather  unintelligible  tirade 
against  his  adversary,  on  whose  birth  and  social 
status  he  cast  invidious  reflections,  and  further 
stigmatized  him  as  a  '  Mushroom  ',  a  '  Caliban  ' 
for  politeness,  a  '  Grub  street  critic  run  to  seed  ' — 
and  so  forth,  all  of  which,  in  an  ecclesiastic  of 
eminence  occupying  the  pulpit  of  Ussher  and 
Tillotson,  was  most  discreditable  and  deplorable. 

Edwards,  who  had  been  quietly  amplifying  his 
evidence  for  enlarged  editions  of  the  Canons,  was 
moved  by  these  things  to  abandon  his  anonymity ; 
and  he  did  so  in  the  later  issues.  He  was  manifestly 
wounded  by  the  attempt  to  '  degrade  him  of  his 
gentility  ',  though  he  did  not  condescend  (as  he 
might  have  done)  to  retort  specifically  to  Warburton 
in  this  respect.  But  he  naturally,  and  successfully, 
vindicated  his  right,  equally  with  Warburton,  to 
study  Shakespeare,  if  he  pleased  ;  and  to  laugh, 
if  he  chose,  at  '  unscholar-like  blunders  ',  '  crude 
and  far-fetched  conceits,'  and  '  illiberal  and  in- 
decent reflections  ',  if  they  were  '  put-off  upon 
the  world  as  a  standard  of  true  criticism  '.  Finally, 
he  quoted  Scaliger  with  crushing  effect.  '  If,'  says 
he,  '  a  person's  learning  is  to  be  judged  of  by  his 
reading,  nobody  can  deny  Eusebius  the  character 
of  a  learned  man  ;  but  if  he  is  to  be  esteemed 
learned,  who  has  shown  judgement  together  with 
his  reading,  Eusebius  is  not  such.'  Here  he  certainly 
hits  Warburton  '  i'  the  clout  '.  At  the  same  time 
he  dedicated  his  book  to  Warburton  as  the  person 
with  whom  it  had  originated  ;  and  he  thanked  him 
ironically  for  the  '  civil  treatment,  so  becoming 
a  Gentleman  and  a  Clergyman  ',  which  he  had 
received  at  his  hands. 


16  LATER  ESSAYS 

Edwards,  during  the  rest  of  his  life,  continued  to 
swell  the  bill  against  Warburton  by  further  additions 
to  the  Canons,  in  many  of  which  he  was  assisted  by 
a  friend,  Mr.  Richard  Roderick,  F.S.A.  and  F.R.S., 
a  fellow  of  Magdalene  College,  Cambridge,  and 
a  son  of  the  Master.  In  the  contest  with  Warburton, 
Edwards  had  unquestionably  the  best  of  the  battle. 
He  was  on  the  right  side,  and  Warburton  on  the 
wrong.  The  labours  of  Edwards  have  now  no  doubt 
been  surpassed  by  later  students  with  larger 
facilities  and  ampler  resources.  But  '  Warburton 
on  Shakespeare '  (like  '  Lauder  on  Milton  '  in 
Hogarth's  Beer  Street]  must  have  long  since  travelled 
irretrievably  to  '  Mr.  Pastern,  the  trunk-maker, 
in  St.  Paul's  Church-yard  ',  while  Warton  pro- 
phesied truly  when  he  said  that  the  great  man's 
'  attacks  on  Mr.  Edwards  were  not  of  sufficient 
weight  to  weaken  the  effects  of  his  excellent  Canons 
of  Criticism ',  which  he  also  characterized  as 
'  allowed  by  all  impartial  critics  to  have  been 
decisive  and  judicious  '.  Walpole,  too,  who  fre- 
quently contrives  to  be  on  the  side  of  posterity, 
wrote  to  Zouch  that  Warburton's  '  preposterous 
notes  .  .  .  would  have  died  of  their  own  folly,  though 
Mr.  Edwards  had  not  put  them  to  death  with  the 
keenest  wit  in  the  world  '.  And  Akenside  (who  had 
his  own  quarrel  with  the  '  tongue-doughty  Pedant  ') 
went  further  still  in  his  enthusiasm.  He  addressed 
an  ode  to  Edwards,  in  which  the  '  Swan  of  Avon  ' 
himself  is  made  to  thank  his  apologist  personally 
for  clearing  his  tomb  of  Warburton's  '  conceits  '. 

The  sixth  edition  of  the  Canons  was  published  by 
Bathurst  in  1758,  after  Edwards's  death.  Besides 
including  '  Remarks  on  Shakespear  '  by  Roderick,1 

1  Roderick  was  also  a  rhymer,  and  preceded  Edwards  in 
Dodsley  with,  inter  alia,  a  translation  of  Lope  de  Vega's 
sonnet  on  sonnet-writing. 


EDWARDS'S  '  CANONS  OF  CRITICISM  '  17 

who  had  died  in  August  1756,  it  comprises  all 
Edwards's  acknowledged  literary  remains.  These 
consist  of  a  little  orthographical  paper  entitled 
'  An  Account  of  the  Trial  of  the  letter  Y,  alias  Y  ', 
and  a  number  of  sonnets,  thirteen  of  which  had 
already  appeared  in  the  second  volume  of  Dodsley's 
Collection.  Their  interest  lies  less  in  their  matter  than 
in  their  form  ;  and  the  more  ambitious  of  them — 
namely,  those  concerned  with  Shakespeare,  Spenser, 
and  Warburton — might  be  strengthened  by  a  dash 
of  Dryden's  direct  vocabulary.  The  prevailing 
note  is  reflective  and  domestic.  But  they  deserve 
consideration  on  account  of  their  technical  excellence. 
All  but  four  of  them  are  on  the  Italian  model,  to 
which  Edwards's  attention  had  been  directed  by 
a  friend,  Daniel  Wray,  the  titular  recipient  of  two 
of  them  ;  and  the  conjectural  date  of  their  com- 
position, 1745-57,  entitles  them,  if  only  as  a  sustained 
effort,  to  a  prominent  place  in  the  mid-eighteenth- 
century  revival  of  the  Miltonic  sonnet.  In  fact, 
their  only  serious  competitors  are  Gray's  isolated 
essay  in  this  way  on  the  death  of  Richard  West, 
written  at  Stoke  in  1742,  and  that  of  Benjamin 
Stillingfleet  to  Dr.  John  Williamson,1  which  Todd 
in  his  Milton  dates  1746.  But  one  of  Edwards's 
sonnets,  which  can  scarcely  have  been  the  first,  is 
addressed  to  Lyttelton  on  his  Conversion  of  St.  Paul, 
published  in  November  1747.  On  the  other  hand. 
Gray's  beautiful  poem,  as — with  all  due  deference 
to  Wordsworth — we  must  continue  to  regard  it, 
is  not  strictly  Miltonic  in  structure,  while  those  of 

1  Dr.  Williamson  (d.  1763)  was  chaplain  to  the  English 
Factory  at  Lisbon,  where  Fielding  met  him  in  1754  and 
spoke  very  highly  of  his  abilities  ;  but  from  Stillingfleet's 
sonnet,  he  seems  to  have  never  fulfilled  the  expectations  of 
his  friends.  His  papers  perished  in  the  Lisbon  earthquake. 

C 


18  LATER  ESSAYS 

Edwards  and  his  '  blue-stocking  '  competitor  rigor- 
ously play  the  game. 

This  brings  us  at  last  to  the  scanty  particulars 
of  Edwards's  life,  the  most  authoritative  of  which 
are  derived  from  the  publisher's  '  Advertisement ' 
prefixed  to  the  sixth  edition  of  the  Canons.  He 
was  born  in  1699.  He  was  still  a  young  man  when, 
by  his  father's  death,  he  inherited  a  '  small  estate  ' 
of  143  acres  at  Pitshanger  (Pitch-hanger  on  the  old 
maps),  a  manor,  or  manor-farm,  in  the  parish  of 
Baling,  Middlesex.  He  is  said  to  have  received 
a  '  liberal  Education  ',  and,  like  his  father  and  grand- 
father, became  a  barrister,  entering  in  1721  at 
Lincoln's  Inn.  From  No.  v  of  his  sonnets,  '  On 
a  Family-Picture,'  we  learn  he  had  four  brothers 
and  four  sisters,  all  of  whom  died  before  him, 
leaving  him,  in  his  own  words,  '  Single,  unpropp'd, 
and  nodding  to  my  fall '.  '  Single  '  here,  probably, 
means  no  more  than  '  solitary '  ;  but  he  never 
married,  though  another  sonnet  clearly  indicates  an 
'  Amoret  ',  either  disdainful  or  deceased.  Nor  did 
he  ever  seriously  practise  the  law;  but  devoted 
himself  to  literature  and  the  cultivation  of  his 
property.  Until  1740  he  lived  chiefly  at  Pitshanger  ; 
but  in  that  year  he  moved  permanently  to  Turrick 
(now  Terrick),  an  estate  near  Ellesborough  in 
Buckinghamshire,  where  he  resided  until  his  death 
in  1757.  His  constitution,  as  may  be  inferred  from 
the  mortality  in  his  family,  cannot  have  been  strong, 
and  apparently  unfitted  him  for  anything  but  the 
*  retirement's  unambitious  shade '  which  he  de- 
siderated and  attained. 

But  though  he  professed  to  live  the  life  of  a 
recluse,  his  sonnets  prove  that  he  had  a  sufficient 
circle  of  friends.  Some  of  his  efforts,  those,  for 
example,  to  Lord  Chancellor  Hardwicke  and 


EDWARDS'S  '  CANONS  OF  CRITICISM  '    19 

Archbishop  Herring,  were  no  doubt  merely  votive 
and  complimentary  ;  others  imply  closer  relations. 
Daniel  Wray,  for  example,  he  had  known  from 
childhood,  and  Wray  must  have  been  a  notable 
man.  He  was  not  only  the  Deputy  Teller  of  the 
Exchequer  to  Philip  Yorke,  later  second  Earl  of 
Hardwicke,  but  he  was  a  learned  archaeologist  who 
became  a  Trustee  of  the  British  Museum.  What 
is  more,  he  was  one  of  the  contributors  to  those 
famous  Athenian  Letters  of  1741-3,  which  were 
once  regarded  as  the  best  existing  commentary  on 
Thucydides.1  And  Edwards  seems  to  have  known 
several  of  the  other  contributors.  Charles  Yorke, 
Philip's  brilliant  younger  brother,  whom  he  apostro- 
phizes familiarly  as  '  Charles '  in  Sonnet  xv,  wrote 
the  '  Preface '  to  the  work  ;  and  Edwards  addresses 
sonnets  to  three  others  of  the  company — to  Philip 
Yorke  himself,  to  the  Rev.  J.  La  wry,  and  Dr.  William 
Heberden,  the  ultimus  Romanorum  of  Johnson  and 
the  '  virtuous  and  faithful  HEBERDEN  '  of  Cowper. 
For  Heberden,  also  Richardson's  doctor,  Edwards 
had  a  sincere  affection.  Heberden  it  was,  he  says, 
who  caused  him  to  exchange  the  '  crouded  Town  ' 
and  the  valley  of  the  Brent  for  the  '  purer  air  '  of 
the  Chiltern  Hills.  It  is  possible,  also,  that  Sonnet 
xlii,  '  To  Miss  ,'  discreetly  veils  the  shrink- 
ing delicacy  of  Miss  Catherine  Talbot,  the  bosom 
friend  of  Eliza  Carter  of  Deal,  afterwards  the 
translator  of  Epictetus.  For  Miss  Talbot,  young 
as  she  was  in  1740,  was  one  of  the  Athenian  corre- 
spondents. 

Another  of  Ed  wards 's  friends  of  long  standing 
was   Richard   Owen  Cambridge,   Walpole's   '  Cam- 
bridge   the    Everything '.      Cambridge    had    been 
born  in  1717,  and  entered  at  Lincoln's  Inn  in  1737. 
1  See  post,  p.  38. 
C  2 


20  LATER  ESSAYS 

Edwards  often  visited  him  in  his  Gloucester  home,  at 
Wheatenhurst  on  the  Stroud,  a  tributary  of  the 
Severn ;  and  Sonnet  i  refers  specifically  to  his 
participation  in  those  promenades  en  bateau  on 
Sabrina's  flood  ',  which  were  Cambridge's  hobby 
and  delight.  Edwards  must  frequently  have  taken 
a  seat  in  the  great  pleasure-boat  after  the  Venetian 
pattern,  painted  with  Samuel  Scott's  panels,  and 
carrying  thirty  cabin  passengers  ;  or  adventured 
in  those  more  perilous  craft  which  his  host  had 
modelled  on  the  fragile  proas  Anson  had  sought  to 
introduce  from  the  Malay  archipelago.  One  of 
Cambridge's  associates,  who  had  lived  on  the  same 
staircase  with  him  at  Lincoln's  Inn,  was  the  parodist 
Isaac  Hawkins  Browne.  Browne,  too,  was  doubtless 
of  these  water  parties  ;  and  in  any  case  must  have 
been  known  to  Edwards,  since  Edwards  devotes 
two  sonnets  to  him,  Nos.  xvi  and  xvii.  In  the 
former  he  acknowledges  Browne's  influence  on  his 
own  versification  ;  in  the  latter  he  invites  him  to 
return  to  his  '  native  language  ',  a  transparent 
reference  to  the  lengthy  Latin  poem  by  Browne  on 
the  Immortality  of  the  Soul,  an  English  translation 
of  which  by  Soame  Jenyns  appears  in  Dodsley's 
sixth  volume.  Browne's  parodies  and  some  mis- 
cellaneous pieces  had  already  figured  in  volume  ii, 
where,  also,  he  had  written  an  ode  to  Charles  Yorke. 
Of  yet  another  friend  of  Edwards  there  are  definite 
indications,  since  he  sends  him,  with  No.  xlv, 
a  batch  of  sonnets.  This  was  Arthur  Onslow,  the 
genial  and  cultivated  Speaker  of  the  House  of 
Commons  from  1728  to  1761.  At  Imber  or  Ember 
Court,  a  pleasant  country  seat  near  Thames  Ditton, 
with  the  Mole  running  through  its  grounds,  Onslow 
was  wont  to  draw  about  him  a  host  of  sympathetic 
or  lettered  guests.  Edwards's  Sonnet  xxviii  is 


EDWARDS'S  '  CANONS  OF  CRITICISM  '    21 

addressed  to  his  son  George,  afterwards  first  Earl 
of  Onslow. 

One  of  the  visitors  at  Imber  Court  was  Samuel 
Richardson,  formerly  an  '  obscure  man  ',  who,  as 
he  boasted  at  Bath,  was  eventually  '  admitted  to 
the  company  of  the  first  characters  in  the  Kingdom  '. 
When  he  made  the  acquaintance  of  Edwards  is 
uncertain  ;  but  the  correspondence  between  them — 
or  at  least  that  portion  of  it  which  is  printed  by 
Mrs.  Barbauld  1 — extends  over  the  last  eight  years 
of  Ed  wards 's  life  and  is  the  main  authority  for  the 
remaining  facts  of  his  biography.  In  January  1749 
Edwards  had  evidently  visited  Richardson  at 
North  End,  Fulham,  and  addressed  to  him  an 
ecstatic  appreciation  of  Clarissa,  the  three  final 
volumes  of  which  had  not  been  long  issued.  A  year 
later  he  also  sent  him  a  laudatory  sonnet  on  the 
same  theme,  which  its  delighted  recipient  speedily 
set  up  in  type,  and  a  copy  was  forthwith  dispatched 
by  Edwards  to  Onslow,  to  go  under  Richardson's 
portrait.  As  the  sonnet  is  unimpeachable  in  form, 
and  no  worse  for  its  recollection,  in  the  opening 
quatrain,  of  the  quotation  from  Horace  with  which 
Fielding  had  greeted  Clarissa  in  No.  5  of  the 
Jacobite's  Journal,2  it  may  here  (despite  the  obscuring 
inversion  of  line  5)  serve  for  a  taste  of  Edwards's 
quality  as  a  sonnet  writer  : 

0  Master  of  the  heart,  whose  magic  skill 
The  close  recesses  of  the  Soul  can  find, 
Can  rouse,  becalm,  and  terrific  the  mind, 

Now  melt  with  pity,  now  with  anguish  thrill, 

1  Con.  of  Richardson,  1804,  iii.  1-137. 

Pectus  inaniter  angit, 
irritat,  mulcet,  falsis  terroribus  implet, 
ut  magus. 

Hem.  Epp.  ii.  1.  211-3. 


22  LATER  ESSAYS 

Thy  moral  page  while  virtuous  precepts  fill, 
Warm  from  the  heart,  to  mend  the  Age  design'd, 
Wit,  strength,  truth,  decency,  are  all  conjoin'd 

To  lead  our  Youth  to  Good,  and  guard  from  111. 

O  long  enjoy,  what  thou  so  well  hast  won, 
The  grateful  tribute  of  each  honest  heart 

Sincere,  nor  hackney'd  in  the  ways  of  men  ; 
At  each  distressful  stroke  their  true  tears  run, 
And  Nature,  unsophisticate  by  Art, 

Owns  and  applauds  the  labors  of  thy  pen. 

Edwards  must  at  once  have  been  made  free  of 
the  North  End  consistory  of  '  Muses  and  Graces ', 
for  in  the  second  letter  printed  by  Mrs.  Barbauld, 
he  has  already  become  acquainted  with  two  of 
Richardson's  '  high-life  '  touchstones,  Mrs.  Delany's 
clever  Irish  friend,  Miss  Anne  Donnellan,  and 
Miss  Sutton.  (The  latter  was  apparently  a  little 
*  difficult  ',  as  her  father,  Sir  Robert  Sutton,  had 
been  Warburton's  earliest  patron.)  He  had  also 
visited  Miss  Hester  (or  Hecky)  Mulso,  in  later 
years  Mrs.  Chapone,  who  was  already  known  (to 
her  circle)  as  an  ode-writer.  She  had  a  beautiful 
voice,  which  induced  Edwards  to  call  her  '  the 
Linnet  ',  and  they  speedily  interchanged  compli- 
ments in  verse.  The  contribution  of  Edwards  is 
Sonnet  xxiv  in  the  Canons.  He  was  also  '  sonnetized  ' 
by  Miss  Highmore,  the  daughter  of  the  painter. 
He  must  have  listened,  in  the  famous  North  End 
Grotto,  to  the  readings  from  Sir  Charles  Grandison, 
then  in  the  making,  although  he  does  not  actually 
figure  in  the  little  picture  which  the  clever  young 
lady  aforesaid  made  of  one  of  these  seances.  But 
that  he  was  sometimes  in  the  audience  on  these 
occasions  is  plain  from  the  fact  that  he  had  the 
courage  to  remonstrate  with  Richardson  respecting 


EDWARDS'S  '  CANONS  OF  CRITICISM  '  23 

certain  injudicious  utterances  in  Miss  Harriet 
Byron's  letters,  which — needless  to  say — Richard- 
son hastily  expunged.  Miss  Susannah  Highmore, 
it  may  be  added,  subsequently  married  the  Rev.  John 
Buncombe,  the  author  of  the  Feminead  :  or,  Female 
Genius,1  a  poem  to  which  Edwards,  notwithstanding 
his  dislike  to  '  omne  quod  exit  in  ad  '  (he  must  have 
forgotten  Cambridge's  Scribleriad !),  was  easily 
reconciled,  since  it  not  only  contained  portraits  of 
those  bright  particular  stars,  Miss  '  Eugenia  ' 
Highmore  and  Miss  '  Delia  '  Mulso,  but  made 
complimentary  reference  to  himself. 

The  Edwards-Richardson  correspondence,  as  we 
have  it,  is  not  particularly  fruitful  in  literary  gossip. 
There  are  some  oft-quoted  outbursts,  on  Richard- 
son's part,  against  Fielding,  to  which  Edwards,  as 
might  be  anticipated,  replies  in  kindred  vein  ;  and 
there  are  references  to  Richardson's  troubles  with 
the  Irish  pirates,  Messrs.  Exshaw,  Wilson,  and 
Satmders.  Richardson  seems  to  have  been  anxious 
to  induce  his  friend  to  follow  up  the  Canons  by  some 
more  extended  critical  or  editorial  work.  He 
suggested  that  he  should  edit  his  '  ever-honoured 
Spenser  ',  a  new  edition  of  whom  was  in  contempla- 
tion. But  Edwards  was  not  to  be  persuaded.  He 
knew  his  own  limitations ;  and  he  shrank  from  the 
responsibilities  of  the  task.  His  standard  of  editing 
was  as  high  as  that  afterwards  so  amply  outlined  by 
Johnson  in  his  Proposals  of  1755  ;  and  he  was 
as  heartily  sick  of  the  hidebound  Warburtons  and 
Newtons  2  as  he  was  of  the  vamped-up  subscription 
issues  of  the  booksellers,  with  their  obtrusive 
typography  and  their  copperplates  '  made  in 

1  Pearch's  Collection,  1775,  iv.  172. 

2  i.e.   Thomas   Newton,   Bishop  of   Bristol,    who  edited 
Paradise  Lost. 


24  LATER  ESSAYS 

Holland  '.  Richardson  next  tried  to  tempt  him 
with  Pope — with  a  rival  edition  to  that  of  War- 
burton.  But  here  Ed  wards 's  objections  were  even 
stronger.  Though  he  had  formerly  been  actually 
in  communication  with  Pope,  and  admired  him  as 
a  poet,  he  did  not  care  for  him  as  an  individual. 
If,  as  he  argued,  he  was  to  take  off  the  patches 
with  which  Warburton  had  tinkered  the  Essay  on 
Man,  matters  would  not  therefore  be  mended. 
Then  again  (an  unsurmountable  reason  !),  War- 
burton  had  Pope's  papers.  In  all  this,  it  is  probable 
that  lack  of  authorities  and  opportunity  had  more 
influence  than  lack  of  ability.  Editing  was  '  a  work  ', 
to  use  Ed  wards 's  own  words,  '  not  to  be  done  with 
a  wet  finger.'  And  it  is  obvious  from  his  later  letters 
that  his  health  was  steadily  failing.  He  died,  aged 
fifty-eight,  after  a  short  illness,  on  January  3,  1757, 
when  visiting  Richardson  at  Parson's  Green  ;  and 
he  was  buried  in  Ellesborough  churchyard  under 
a  lengthy  epitaph  by  his  nephews  and  heirs.  One 
of  his  last  sonnets  was  addressed  to  the  sexton 
of  the  parish,  whom  he  adjured  to  guard  his 
'  monumental  hillock  '  from  '  trampling  cattle  ' — an 
illustration  of  the  days  when  God's  acre  was  used 
as  a  grazing1  ground.  Edwards  was  a  worthy, 
amiable,  well-educated  gentleman,  with  an  inborn 
love  of  books.  His  literary  record  is  not  large,  or 
lasting.  But  it  is  something  to  have  smitten  the 
Goliath  of  pedantry  with  the  pebble  of  common 
sense  :  something,  also,  to  have  made  a  sustained 
attempt  to  revive  the  sonnet  of  Milton  under  the 
sovereignty  of  Pope. 

1  Cp.  Gay's  Shepherd's  Week,  1714,  p.  49. 


AN   18TH-CENTURY   HIPPOCRATES 

IN  Plutarch's  life  of  Numa  Pompilius,  the  rule 
and  order  of  the  Vestal  Virgins  are  thus  concisely 
denned  :  '  In  the  first  ten  years  they  learn  what 
they  have  to  do  :  the  next  ten  years  following,  they 
do  that  which  they  have  learned  :  and  the  last  ten 
years,  they  teach  young  novices.' 1  With  a  para- 
phrase of  this  passage,  William  Heberden,  M.D., 
here  selected  as  the  example  of  the  eighteenth- 
century  '  beloved  physician  '  (in  the  nineteenth  that 
title  was  popularly  assigned  to  Dr.  John  Brown  of 
Edinburgh),  opens  the  Preface  to  his  Commentaries 
on  the  History  and  Cure  of  Diseases.  '  This  is  no 
bad  model  [he  says]  for  the  life  of  a  physician  ' ; 
and  when  in  1782,  he  had  passed  through  the  first 
and  second  of  the  stages  above  indicated,  he  sat 
down,  as  the  Greek  motto  on  his  title-page  pro- 
claims, to  digest  and  co-ordinate  the  methodical 
bedside  notes  of  his  forty  years'  practice.  The 
matter  of  his  book  is  naturally  beyond  the  province 
of  this  paper.  It  is  not  of  the  supreme  contem- 
porary authority  on  angina  pectoris,  or  of  the  learned 
analyst  of  that  '  mithridate  '  2  which  has  passed 
into  English  poetry  as  a  synonym  for  '  antidote  ', 
that  it  is  proposed  to  speak.  Rather  is  it  of  the 
accomplished  Fellow  of  his  college  who  was  scholar 
enough  to  contribute  to  the  Athenian  Letters — 
whose  associates  were  as  diverse  as  Gray  and  Jacob 
Bryant,  Kennicott,  and  Conyers  Middleton — and 

1  North's  Plutarch,  Rouse's  ed.,  1898,  i.  245. 

2  Drayton  calls  garlic  '  the  poor  man's  mithridate  '.    The 
word  is  also  used  by  Donne,  Lyly,  and  Ben  Jonson. 


26  LATER  ESSAYS 

who  numbered  among  his  patients  not  only  Richard- 
son and  Thomas  Edwards  of  the  Canons  of  Criticism, 
but  Cowper  and  Johnson,  and  Mrs.  Delany  and 
George  III.  That  he  should  have  deserved  and 
obtained  the  esteem  and  affection  of  all  these  is 
assuredly  reason  enough  for  raising  to  his  memory 
a  modest  cairn  of  commendation. 

He  was  seventy-two  when  he  signed  the  Preface 
to  his  Commentaries,  having  been  born  in  London 
in  August  1710.  His  father,  Richard  Heberden, 
came  of  a  good  Hampshire  family,  but  his  profession 
is  unknown.  He  died  in  October  1717,  leaving  his 
family  '  in  somewhat  straitened  circumstances '. 
A  few  months  before,  his  son  had  been  admitted 
into  the  Grammar  School  of  St.  Saviour's,  South- 
wark,  of  which  in  after  life  he  became  a  benefactor. 
Here  he  succeeded  so  well  that  he  was  sent,  in  his 
fifteenth  year,  to  St.  John's,  Cambridge,  later  the 
college  of  Mason,  as  it  had  formerly  been  that  of 
Prior.  This  was  in  1724.  Four  years  subsequently, 
he  graduated  B.A.,  proceeding  Fellow  in  1730. 
Thereupon  he  entered  on  what  was  to  be  the  first 
period  of  his  future  calling,  and  studied  medicine 
assiduously  at  London  and  Cambridge.  In  1739 
he  became  an  M.D.  and  practised  for  some  years 
at  the  University.  But  he  did  not,  on  this 
account,  relax  his  interest  in  the  affairs  of  his 
Alma  Mater,  nor  neglect  the  reputation  he  had 
acquired  as  a  Hebraist  and  classical  scholar.  Thus 
it  comes  about  that  he  figures  as  a  contributor  to 
the  at  first  privatelv-printed  Athenian  Letters  of 
1741-3. 

'  Writ  large  '  in  a  liberal  sub-title,  these  letters 
purport  to  be  the  Epistolary  Correspondence  of  an 
Agent  of  the  King  of  Persia  residing  at  Athens 
during  the  Peloponnesian  War,  translated  from  a 


AN  18TH-CENTURY  HIPPOCRATES       27 

manuscript  in  the  Old  Persic  language  preserved  in 
the  library  at  Fez.  They  were,  as  a  matter  of  fact, 
mainly  the  work  of  a  group  of  clever  young  Cam- 
bridge men  (most  of  whom  rose  in  the  future  to 
positions  of  eminence),  who  composed  them  '  as 
a  preparatory  trial  of  their  strength  and  as  the  best 
method  of  imprinting  on  their  own  minds  some  of 
the  immediate  subjects  of  their  academical  studies  '. 
In  this  aspiration  they  were  said  to  have  been 
encouraged  by  the  Reverend  and  indefatigable 
Thomas  Birch  of  the  General  Dictionary  (then  con- 
cluding or  just  concluded),  who  was  one  of  the 
contributors.  As  Birch's  lifelong  patron  was  the 
first  Earl  of  Hardwicke,  and  Hardwicke's  sons, 
Philip,  afterwards  second  Lord  Hardwicke,  and  his 
brilliant  brother  Charles,  were  the  leading  writers, 
this  may  well  have  been  the  case.  In  its  first  form 
(four  volumes,  octavo)  the  issue  of  the  book  was 
exceptionally  '  limited  ',  only  twelve  copies  being 
struck  off  at  the  expense  of  the  authors  '  under  the 
strictest  injunctions  of  secrecy  '.1 

1  So  long  a  period  elapsed  before  the  Athenian  Letters 
emerged  from  their  semi-suppressed  condition,  that  it  will 
be  best  to  follow  their  further  fortunes  in  a  foot-note.  In 
1781,  when  Charles  Yorke  was  dead,  his  brother  Philip,  then 
second  Earl,  issued,  in  one  quarto  volume,  another  privately- 
printed  edition  of  one  hundred  copies,  with  the  result  that 
the  book,  having  become  known,  began  to  be  sought  after. 
This  led  to  the  publication  of  an  edition  in  two  vols.  octavo, 
a  copy  of  which  was  sent  in  1789  by  the  Lord  Dover  of  the 
day  to  the  venerable  Abb6  Barthelemy,  author  of  the 
Voyage  du  jeune  Anacharsis  en  Grece,  1788.  Barthelemy 
was  lavish  in  compliment ;  and  was  polite  enough  to  add 
that,  had  he  known  earlier  of  the  book,  he  should  either 
have  refrained  from  writing  his  own,  or  endeavoured  to 
improve  it  by  so  excellent  a  model.  In  1798  appeared  an 
authoritative  edition,  duly  equipped  with  portraits,  map, 
geographical  index,  and  '  Advertisement '  by  the  third  Earl 
of  Hardwicke  ;  and  the  book,  by  this  time,  in  the  opinion  of 


28  LATER  ESSAYS 

Heberden's  contribution  to  this  now-forgotten 
work  was,  of  course,  professional.  It  is  contained 
in  Letter  CXXXVI,  vol.  ii,  from  Oleander,  the 
Persian  agent  of  the  fable,  to  Alexias,  the  chief 
physician  of  Artaxerxes,  and  consists  of  what  would 
to-day  be  called  an  '  appreciation  '  of  Hippocrates 
of  Cos  as  he  '  struck  a  contemporary  '.  Excellent 
as  it  is,  it  does  not  lend  itself  easily  to  quotation, 
unless  one  excepts  the  cynical  characterization,  by 
a,  '  certain  Athenian  ',  of  '  gymnastick  physick  '  as 
'  the  art  of  preserving  their  lives  who  ought  not  to 
live,  and  continuing  valetudinarians  a  burden  to 
themselves  and  society  ' — an  utterance  which,  if  it 
were  ever  grateful  to  a  Greek,  would  certainly  not 
be  acceptable  to  our  latter-day  disciples  of  Sandow. 
Oleander  dwells  on  the  depressed  state  of  medicine 
before  Hippocrates,  when  it  appears  to  have  been 
wholly  in  the  hands  of  nostrum-mongers  and  quack- 
salvers ;  on  the  pertinacity  with  which  Hippocrates 
insisted  on  studying  the  stages  of  disease  at  the 
patient's  bedside,  so  as  to  earn  for  himself  the 
reputation  of  a  '  clinic  '  physician  ;  on  his  deter- 
mined endeavour  to  dissociate  medicine  from  the 
dubious  philosophy  to  which  it  had  become  affiliated; 
and,  finally  and  chiefly,  on  the  method  and  lucidity 
which  justly  entitle  him  to  the  credit  of  being  the 
first  to  collect  '  the  scattered  precepts  of  physick  ' 
into  an  art,  and  to  '  deliver  them  like  a  man  of  this 
world  '.x  Some  of  Oleander's  utterances  read 

the  Monthly  Review,  constituted  the  best  commentary  on 
Thucydides  then  extant. 

1  Charles  Fox,  who  read  his  Hippocrates,  highly  approved 
one  of  the  famous  Aphorisms.  It  was,  as  quoted  by  Rogers  : 
'  The  second-best  remedy  is  better  than  the  best,  if  the 
patient  likes  it  best '  (Table-Talk,  1856,  p.  94).  But,  in  the 
quotation  books,  he  is  known  mainly  by  the  rightly-famous 
'  Life  is  short,  art  long  '.  He  did  not,  however,  confirm  his 
initial  axiom,  for  he  lived  to  be  104. 


AN  18TH-CENTURY  HIPPOCRATES       29 

strangely  to  the  uninstructed  modern.  It  is  diffi- 
cult to  realize  that  '  it  is  doubtful  whether  Hippo- 
crates ever  saw  a  human  body  dissected  ',  and  that 
the  illustrious  Father  of  Medicine  knew  no  more  of 
anatomy  than  could  be  learned  from  sacrificed 
animals  or  Egyptian  mummies.  There  are  in 
Cleander's  communication,  among  other  passages, 
some  which  are  probably  no  more  than  the  echo  of 
what  Johnson  calls  '  the  unauthorized  loquacity  of 
common  fame  '  ;  but  in  any  case  Heberden's  con- 
tribution must  have  been  a  welcome  and  authori- 
tative addition  to  the  Athenian  Letters. 

Beyond  a  few  notes  supplied  in  1744  to  Zachary 
Grey's  Hudibras,  in  the  subscription  list  of  which 
Heberden  duly  appears,  with  several  of  his  Cam- 
bridge colleagues,  no  other  of  his  purely  literary 
efforts  seems  to  have  survived,  though  as  a  Hebraist 
he  gave  acknowledged  aid  to  Bishop  Newcome  in 
his  book  on  The  Twelve  Minor  Prophets.  During 
the  period  of  his  residence  at  Cambridge  as  a  practis- 
ing physician  he  delivered  a  course  of  lectures  on 
materia  medica.  These  had  many  auditors  who 
became  distinguished,  notably  Sir  George  Baker, 
later  physician  to  Queen  Charlotte,  and  are  remark- 
able by  their  wealth  of  classical  quotation  and 
illustration.  '  Homer,  Plautus,  Plutarch,  Vitruvius, 
Virgil,  Horace,  Lucretius,  Cicero,  Ovid,  Persius, 
Lucan,  Catullus,  Juvenal,  and  Pliny  [says  Dr. 
Pettigrew]  are  all  made  to  illustrate  and  adorn  his 
discourses.'  They  have  never  been  printed,  although 
they  were,  or  are,  still  existent  in  manuscript  form  ; 
but  a  solitary  example  of  them  is  supposed  to  exist 
in  the  tract  entitled  Antitheriaka,  published  in  1745. 
And  here  it  will  be  safest  to  invoke  the  aid  of  a  pro- 
fessional pen  :  '  Treating  of  this  famous  medicine 
[Mithridatium]  which  had  not  yet  been  expunged 


30  LATER  ESSAYS 

from  our  public  dispensatory,  Dr.  Heberden  proves 
that  the  only  poisons  known  to  the  ancients  were 
hemlock,  monk's  hood,  and  those  of  venomous 
beasts  ;  and  that  to  these  few  they  knew  of  no 
antidotes.  That  the  farrago  called  after  the  cele- 
brated King  of  Pontus  [Mithridates  Eupator], 
which,  in  the  time  of  Celsus,  consisted  of  thirty- 
eight  simples,  had  changed  its  composition  every 
hundred  years,  and  that  therefore  what  had  been 
for  so  many  ages  called  Mithridatium  was  quite 
different  from  the  true  medicine  found  in  the  cabinet 
of  that  prince.  This,  he  states,  was  a  very  trivial 
one,  composed  of  twenty  leaves  of  rue,  one  grain  of 
salt,  two  nuts,  and  two  dried  figs  ;  and  he  infers 
that,  even  supposing  Mithridates  had  ever  used  the 
compound  (which  is  doubtful),  his  not  being  able  to 
dispatch  himself  was  less  owing  to  the  strength 
of  his  antidote  than  to  the  weakness  of  his  poison.' 1 

These  last  lines  might  be  more  explicit.  In  either 
case,  the  dictionaries  agree  that  Mithridates  killed 
himself  to  avoid  falling  into  the  hands  of  the 
Romans.2 

When,  in  1745,  Antitheriaka  was  published,  Heber- 
den was  five-and-thirty,  and  his  Cambridge  reputa- 
tion had  begun  to  extend  to  the  metropolis.  In 
the  same  year  he  was  admitted  as  a  candidate  to 
the  College  of  Physicians,  then  in  Warwick  Lane, 
Newgate  Street  ;  and  in  1746  he  became  a  Fellow. 
About  1748,  on  the  invitation  of  George  the  Second's 
Physician-in-Ordinary,  Sir  Edward  Hulse,  he  moved 

1  Macmichael's  The  Gold-headed  Cane,  Munk's  ed.,  1884, 
pp.  99-100. 

8  Heberden  (according  to  Macmichael)  discredited  the 
stories  of  poisons  that  could  be  concealed  in  seals  and  the  like. 
But,  in  Heberden's  own  day,  Condorcet  died  in  the  prison  of 
Bourg-la-Reine  from  a  poison  that  he  carried  in  the  besel 
of  his  ring. 


AN  18TH-CENTURY  HIPPOCRATES       81 

to  London,  taking  up  his  abode  in  Cecil  Street, 
Strand.  (Whether  this  was  a  favoured  haunt  of  the 
faculty  we  know  not  ;  but  it  was  to  Hayley's  friend, 
Dr.  William  Austin,  '  of  Cecil  Street,  London  ',  that 
Cowper  addressed  a  sonnet  in  May  1792,  thanking 
him  for  his  advice  in  Mrs.  Unwin's  second  paralytic 
seizure.)  Henceforth  Heberden  rapidly  progressed 
in  popularity.  In  1752  he  gave  up  his  St.  John's 
fellowship  and  married  Miss  Elizabeth  Martin, 
daughter  of  John  Martin,  M.P.  for  Tewkesbury. 
Two  years  later  she  died  ;  and  in  1761  he  married 
again,  the  lady  being  Miss  Wollaston,  of  Charter- 
house Square.  By  his  first  wife  he  had  a  son,  who 
became  Canon  of  Exeter  ;  by  his  second,  several 
children,  only  two  of  whom  survived,  one  being  the 
Mary  Heberden  who  figures  in  Fanny  Burney's 
Diary  for  1787  ;  the  other,  his  son  and  biographer 
William.  Meanwhile  distinctions  came  to  him  freely 
from  Warwick  Lane  and  elsewhere.  When,  in 
1761,  Queen  Charlotte  arrived  from  Mecklenburg, 
George  III  offered  him  the  post  of  Physician  to 
Her  Majesty.  This  offer  he  thought  fit  to  decline, 
on  the  ground  that  '  it  might  interfere  with  those 
connexions  of  life  which  he  had  now  formed  ', 
among  which,  it  is  only  reasonable  to  suppose,  his 
second  marriage  played  its  part.  But  it  is  a  signifi- 
cant proof  of  his  personal  influence  that,  notwith- 
standing this  refusal,  he  was  successful  in  obtaining 
the  appointment  for  a  nominee  of  his  own,  a  little- 
known  but  extremely  competent  Dr.  Joseph  Lether- 
land.  It  is  not,  however,  necessary  to  record  all 
the  milestones  of  a  uniformly  prosperous  career. 
Soon  after  his  arrival  in  London  he  had  been 
strongly  impressed  by  the  signs  of  impaired  power 
in  his  celebrated  contemporary,  Dr.  Mead  ;  and 
he  had  resolved  in  his  own  case  not  to  disregard 


32  LATER  ESSAYS 

the  timely  warnings  of  advancing  years.  For  this 
reason,  in  1783,  he  deemed  it  prudent  (in  his  son's 
words)  '  to  withdraw  a  little  from  the  fatigues  of 
his  profession.  He  therefore  purchased  a  house  at 
Windsor,  to  which  he  used  ever  afterwards  to  retire 
during  some  of  the  summer  months  ;  but  returned 
to  London  in  the  winter,  and  still  continued  to  visit 
the  sick  for  many  years.'  l  When  he  ceased  to 
reside  in  Cecil  Street  is  not  apparent ;  but  his  last 
London  house  was  on  the  south  side  (Captain 
Morris's  '  sweet,  shady  side  ')  of  Pall  Mall,  looking, 
at  the  back,  on  the  Mall  and  St.  James's  Park. 
According  to  Granger,  Heberden  himself  built,  or 
rebuilt,  this  on  a  freehold  site  given  by  Charles  II 
to  Nell  Gwyn,  the  last  owners  of  which  had  been 
the  Waldegrave  family,  from  whom  it  was  pur- 
chased.2 Of  Heberden's  closing  years  there  is  little 
to  say.  In  1796,  when  he  was  eighty-seven,  he 
fractured  his  thigh  when  attending  service  at  the 
Chapel  Royal,  St.  James's — an  accident  which 
disabled  him  from  active  exercise  to  the  end  of  his 
life,  and  prompted  in  a  contemporary  the  apposite 
quotation  from  Virgil  : 

Nee  te  tua  plurima,  Panthu. 
labentem  pietas,  nee  Apollinis  infula  texit.3 

On  May  17,  1801,  being  then  in  his  ninety-first 
year,  he  died  in  his  Pall  Mall  house,  and  was  buried 
in  Windsor  Parish  Church,  where  there  is  a  monu- 
ment to  his  memory.  His  portrait  by  Sir  William 
Beechey,  R.A.,  hangs  in  the  Censor's  Room  of  the 
Royal  College  of  Physicians. 

1  Memoir  prefixed  to  the  translated  Commentaries  of  1806, 
p.  iv. 

2  There  is  a  print  of  the  house  in  the  Grace  Collection  at 
the  British  Museum  (Hill's  Johnson's  Letters,  1892,  ii.  302  n.). 

3  Aeneid  ii.  429-30. 


AN  18TH-CENTURY  HIPPOCRATES       33 

Dr.  Heberden's  Commentaries  on  the  History  and 
Cure  of  Diseases  (Commentarii  de  Morborum  Historia 
et  Curatione),  though  drawn  up  as  early  as  1782, 
were  not  published  until  1802,  a  year  after  his 
death.  They  were  originally  written  in  Latin  and 
translated  by  the  author's  distinguished  son,  Dr. 
William  Heberden  the  younger.  Examination  of 
them  here  would  be  out  of  place  as  well  as  perilous 
to  a  layman  ;  and  upon  this  theme  we  shall  content 
ourselves  by  quoting  Sir  NORMAN  MOORE.  There 
can  be  no  higher  authority.  Dr.  William  Heberden, 
he  says,  '  is  rightly  considered  one  of  the  greatest 
of  English  physicians.  His  Commentaries  on  the 
History  and  Cure  of  Diseases  is  a  book  which  can 
never  become  obsolete  or  cease  to  be  worth  reading 
by  a  student  of  medicine,  so  absolutely  is  it  based 
on  an  exact  personal  observation  of  disease.'  l 

With  this  we  pass  to  such  dispersed  particulars 
of  Heberden's  relations  with  his  contemporaries  as 
we  have  been  able  to  bring  together.  The  facts 
of  his  career,  it  will  be  gathered,  are  not  such  as 
furnish  material  for  eventful  history.  But  of  few 
men  can  it  be  more  literally  advanced  that  he  was 
'  known  by  his  friends  '.  From  the  date  of  his 
establishment  in  Cecil  Street  to  the  end  of  his  days 
he  must  have  been  one  of  the  most  popular  and 
best  respected  members  of  his  profession,  though  it 
is  not  from  himself  that  we  learn  it.  Among  his 
patients  he  numbered  many  of  the  leading  celebrities, 
with  most  of  whom  he  was  also  on  terms  of  intimacy. 
And  not  a  few  of  the  literati  of  his  day  were  attracted 

1  A  Lecture  on  the  Principles  and  Practice  of  Medicine, 
delivered  October  3,  1899,  by  Norman  Moore,  M.D.,  p.  2. 
The  Commentaries  are  examined  in  some  detail  by  the  late 
A.  C.  Buller,  B.A.,  Cambridge,  whose  interesting  Essay  on 
the  Life  and  Works  of  Heberden  obtained  the  Wix  Prize  at 
St.  Bartholomew's  Hospital  in  1878. 

D 


34  LATER  ESSAYS 

to  him  by  his  attainments  as  a  scholar  and  man  of 
science.     One  of  the  earliest  of  this  group  must 
have  been  that  inveterate  anti-Bentleyite  Conyers 
Middleton,    though    he   was    not,    perhaps,    to    be 
reckoned  among  his  close  associates.     But  Middle- 
ton's  History  of  the  Life  of  Cicero,  the  much- vaunted 
work  which  was  said  to  owe  its  matter  to  William 
Bellenden  and  its  manner  to  John,  Lord  Hervey, 
belongs  to  1741,  the  year  of  the  Athenian  Letters  ; 
and  the  farm  which  the  profits  enabled  Middleton 
to  purchase  at  Hildersham,  on  the  Granta,  where 
for  the  rest  of  his  life  he  chiefly  lived,  was  only 
six  miles  from  Cambridge.    He  must  have  been  for 
some  time  under  Heberden's  care  when,  not  long 
before  his  death  in  1750,  he  came  to  London  to 
seek  further  advice,  since  he  told  the  specialist  he 
consulted  that  '  his  case  being  out  of  the  power  of 
physick  '  he  had  long  taken  Dr.  Heberden's  medicines 
without    effect.1     Heberden   subsequently   printed 
from  an  Harleian  manuscript  in  the  British  Museum 
an  unpublished  Appendix  to  an  earlier  work  which 
Middleton  had  issued  in  1726,  on  '  the  servile  and 
ignoble  condition  '  of  the  medical  profession  among 
the   Romans,    adding  thereto   an   account   of  the 
circumstances  which  led  to  its  long-deferred  publica- 
tion.    He  was,  however,  by  no  means  prepared  to 
act  as  foster-father  to  all  Middleton's  posthumous 
productions,    for    when    Middleton's    widow    (and 
third  wife)  brought  him  an  unpublished  treatise  on 
the  inefficacy  of  prayer,   which  her  versatile  but 
unorthodox  husband  had  left  behind  him,  Heberden, 
after  reading  it  carefully,   told   her  frankly  that 
though  it  might  do  credit  to  his  learning,  it  could 
do  none  to  his  principles  or  memory.    It  is,  never- 
theless, characteristic  of  the  benevolence  attributed 
1  Climenson's  Elizabeth  Montagu,  1906,  i.  276. 


AN  18TH-CENTURY  HIPPOCRATES       35 

to  him  that,  having  ascertained  from  a  publisher 
that  the  market  value  of  the  copyright  of  such 
a  piece  would  be  £150,  he  paid  Mrs.  Middleton  £200 
and  burned  the  manuscript.1 

One  of  the  critics  who  contested  the  authenticity 
of  the  letters  of  Cicero  and  Brutus  which  Middleton 
had  published  was  the  distinguished  Greek  scholar 
Jeremiah  Markland,  whom  Heberden  knew  well 
and  must  often  have  visited  at  Milton  Court,  the 
spacious  old  Elizabethan  farm-house  near  Dorking 
where,  as  Mrs.  Rose's  lodger,  Markland  spent  the 
last  twenty-four  years  of  his  secluded  and  studious 
life,  and  to  which,  after  his  death,  another  great 
Grecian,  Richard  Person,  made  reverential  pil- 
grimage in  his  honour.  Heberden  it  was  who  paid 
for  the  publication  of  Markland 's  editions  of  the 
Suppllces  (1763)  and  the  two  Iphigenias  (1771)  of 
Euripides  ;  and  it  was  Heberden  who  wrote  the 
inscription  for  the  votive  brass  which  stands  (or 
stood,  since  the  church  has  been  twice  rebuilt)  to 
Markland's  memory  in  the  chancel  of  St.  Martin, 
Dorking.  To  Heberden,  Markland  left  all  his  books, 
which  were  enriched  by  his  valuable  notes.  His 
tomb,  with  that  of  Abraham  Tucker  of  Betchworth 
Castle,  author  (as  '  Edward  Search  ')  of  The  Liglti 
of  Nature  Pursued,  is  in  the  now  disused  churchyard. 

Markland  was  not  the  only  scholar  of  eminence 
who  belonged  to  Heberden's  circle  of  friends.  There 
is  good  evidence  that  he  was  well  acquainted  with 
Thomas  Tyrwhitt,  the  accomplished  editor  of 
Chaucer's  Canterbury  Tales,  who,  before  finally 
devoting  himself  to  literature,  had  contrived  to  be 

1  This  story  is  told  in  different  ways.  The  version  here 
followed  is  that  of  Dr.  Macmichael  in  The  Gold-headed  Cane, 
Munk's  ed.,  1884,  pp.  108-9,  and  was  probably  derived  from 
Dr.  Heberden's  son. 

D2 


36  LATER  ESSAYS 

a  competent  Under-Secretary  at  War  and  an 
efficient  Clerk  to  the  House  of  Commons,  earning 
distinction  in  both  capacities.  Tyrwhitt  was  not 
only  '  a  master  of  almost  every  European  tongue  ', 
but  he  was  regarded  by  Person  as  '  an  admirable 
critic  V  and  Lord  Charlemont  (no  mean  judge) 
considered  that  his  pamphlet  on  the  Chatterton 
question  was  '  the  most  candid,  accurate  and  satis- 
factory controversial  tract  '  that  he  had  ever 
perused.2  Like  Twining,  Tyrwhitt  translated  Aris- 
totle's Poetics,  and  his  version,  published  in  1794, 
after  his  death,  is  specially  praised  by  a  modern 
critic  for  its  '  penetrating  scholarship  '.3  His  rela- 
tions with  Heberden  are  evidenced  by  the  verses 
he  wrote  for  an  olive-wood  tea-caddy,  which 
'  Athenian  '  Stuart,  another  friend,  had  brought 
to  Heberden  from  Greece.  Tyrwhitt  was  dining 
with  Heberden  shortly  after  it  arrived,  and  he  sent 
his  host  next  day  the  following  sextet  : 

In  Attic  fields,  by  famed  Ilissus'  flood, 
The  sacred  tree  of  Pallas  once  I  stood. 
Now  torn  from  thence,  with  graceful  emblems 

drest, 

For  Mira's  tea  I  form  a  polished  chest. 
Athens,  farewell  !    no  longer  I  repine 
For  my  Socratic  shade  and  patroness  divine. 

Jacob  Bryant,  the  mythologist,  turned  the  lines 
into  Latin,  Sir  William  Jones  into  Greek — facts 
which  supply  us  with  the  names  of  two  more  of 
Heberden's  learned  friends. 

Of  Jacob  Bryant,  of  whom  it  was  jestingly  said 
that  he  knew  everything  down  to  the  Deluge  and 

1  Parsoniana,  in  Rogers's  Table-Talk,  1856,  p.  322. 
*  Charlemont  Corr.,  1891,  i.  422.     It  was  entitled  A  Vindi- 
cation of  the  Appendix  to  the  Poems  called  Rowley's,  1782. 
8  Prickard,  Aristotle  on  the  Art  of  Poetry,  1891,  vi. 


AN  18TH-CENTURY  HIPPOCRATES       37 

no  farther,  who  believed  in  Chattertoii  but  dis- 
believed in  Troy,  and  whose  Analysis  of  Ancient 
Mythology  is  supposed  to  have  foreshadowed  Mr. 
Casaubon's  arid  and  unachieved  magnum  opus  in 
George  Eliot's  Middlemarch,1  one  might  reasonably 
expect  interesting  particulars.  As  Bryant  lived  at 
Cippenham,  about  three  miles  from  Windsor,  he 
must  often  have  met  Heberden  when  in  residence 
there,  though  of  their  actual  intercourse  Fanny 
Burney's  Diary  reveals  nothing  but  a  meeting  on 
the  Terrace.  Nor  is  there  more  of  '  Oriental  Jones  ', 
or  some  others  whom  Dr.  Macmichael  classes  as 
Heberden's  associates.  He  speaks  of  those  typical 
eighteenth-century  prelates,  Lowth  and  Kurd  ;  of 
Jortin  and  the  Hebraist  Kennicott ;  of  Cavendish 
(the  chemist  ?)  and  the  tardily-orthodox  Soame 
Jenyns  ;  but  restricts  himself  to  the  barren  enumera- 
tion of  their  names,  so  that  one  must  fall  back  on 
those  who  were  primarily  patients.  In  the  preceding 
paper  we  have  spoken  of  Thomas  Edwards  of  the 
Canons  of  Criticism  and  Richardson  as  coming 
in  this  category.2  Heberden  certainly  attended 
Edwards,  who  in  his  declining  years  addressed  to 
him  a  sonnet  in  which,  after  thanking  him  for  his 
'  healing  arts  '  and  referring  to  his  '  wealth  un- 
envied  ',  adjures  him  (doubtless  with  an  eye  to 
a  vindictive  Warburton  in  the  background  !)  to 

Cherish  his  memory,  and  protect  his  fame, 
Whom  thy  true  worth  has  made  thy  faithful  friend ; 

and  he  certainly  ministered  to  the  author  of  Sir 
Charles  Grandison  in  those  obscure  nervous  dis- 
orders to  which  excessive  sensibility  and  devotion 
to  business  had  reduced  that  exemplary  man.  '  I 

1  He  is  actually  mentioned  in  chap.  xxii. 

2  See  ante,  p.  19. 


38  LATER  ESSAYS 

must  have  done  ',  writes  Edwards  to  his  friend  in 
January  1750,  or  '  good  Mr.  Heberden  will  chide 
me  for  teasing  you  with  long  letters  '.  As  if  long 
letters  could  have  any  terrors  for  Samuel  Richardson ! 
But  perhaps  he  disliked  them — in  other  people. 

One  of  Heberden's  London  patients  was  Cowper 
who  consulted  him  in  1763,  previous  to  his  terrible 
second  derangement.  Heberden,  who  was  an 
ardent  advocate  of  fresh  air  and  change  of  scene 
(he  had  earlier  sent  Edwards  from  London  to  the 
Chiltern  Hills),  recommended  Cowper  to  go  to 
Margate,  where  he  stayed  during  August  and 
September,  visiting  thence,  among  other  things, 
that  fantastic  imitation  (with  supplements)  of 
Cicero's  Formian  Villa,  which  had  be, en  erected  at 
Kingsgate  three  years  before  by  Henry  Fox,  first 
Lord  Holland,  and  which,  three  years  later,  prompted 
the  satiric  quatrains  of  Gray.  Cowper  calls  it  '  a 
fine  piece  of  ruins  '.  The  Margate  treatment  tem- 
porarily raised  his  spirits,  but  did  no  more  good  than 
Heberden's  drugs.  Eighteen  years  afterwards,  he 
nevertheless  still  remembered  his  old  doctor,  and  in 
his  '  Retirement  '  refers  to  him  as  one — 

whose  skill 

Attempts  no  task  it  cannot  well  fulfil, 
Gives  melancholy  up  to  nature's  care, 
And  sends  the  patient  into  purer  air. 

Whether  Heberden  ever  prescribed  for  the  highly- 
strung  author  of  the  Elegy  Wrote  in  a  Country 
Church  Yard  is  not  apparent  from  Gray's  corre- 
spondence. But  with  another  of  Heberden's  patients 
Gray's  name  is  indissolubly  connected.  This  was 
the  wife  of  his  friend  Mason,  that  beautiful  and 
amiable  Mary  Sherman,  whose  metrical  epitaph  may 
still  be  read  in  Bristol  Cathedral,  graced  with  the 


AN  18TH-CENTURY  HIPPOCRATES       39 

familiar  closing  quatrain  by  Gray  which  goes  so  far 
to  redeem  her  husband's  preliminary  lines.  Her 
brief  married  life  only  lasted  two  years,  as  she  died 
of  consumption  at  eight-and-twenty,  apparently  in 
the  very  act  of  drinking  the  Bristol  waters — a  fact 
which  must  be  allowed  to  justify  the  Masonic  '  she 
bow'd  to  taste  the  wave  '.  There  is  a  reference  to 
her  in  one  of  Warburton's  letters  : 

'  Mason  called  on  me  the  other  day,  he  is  grown 
extremely  fat,  and  his  wife  extremely  lean,  indeed  in 
the  last  stage  of  a  consumption.  I  inquired  of  her 
health  ;  he  said  she  was  something  better,  and  that 
I  suppose  encouraged  him  to  come  out,  but  Dr. 
Balguy  tells  me  that  Heberden  J  says  she  is  irre- 
trievably gone,  and  has  touched  upon  it  to  him, 
and  ought  to  do  it  to  her.  When  the  terms  of  such 
a  sentence  may  impede  the  Doctor's  endeavour  to 
save,  the  pronouncing  it,  would  be  very  indiscreet, 
but  in  a  consumption  confirmed,  it  is  a  work  of 
charity,  as  the  patient  is  always  deluded  with  hopes 
to  the  very  last  breath.'  2 

In  this  instance,  for  once,  one  is  disposed  to  say 
ditto  to  Warburton.  But  the  question  was  much 
debated.  Hume,  in  one  of  his  letters  to  Strahan, 
seems  to  think  it  justifiable  to  deceive  sick  people 
'  for  their  Good  '.  But  Johnson's  sturdy  honesty 
recoiled  from  falsehood  in  any  form.  '  I  deny  [he 
said]  the  lawfulness  of  telling  a  lie  to  a  sick  man 
for  fear  of  alarming  him.  You  have  no  business 
with  consequences  ;  you  are  to  tell  the  truth.' 

His  other  reasons  were  not  so  forcible  :   '  Besides 

1  Heberden  had  known  Mason  since  1747,  when  he  had 
joined  with  Gray  in  procuring  Mason's  election  to  a  Fellow- 
ship at  Pembroke  Hall  (Tovey's  Gray's  Letters,  1900-12, 
i.  187  n. 

3  Ibid.  ii.  115  n.,  from  Mitford. 


40  LATER  ESSAYS 

[he  added]  you  are  not  sure  what  effect  your  telling 
him  that  he  is  in  danger  may  have.  It  may  bring 
his  distemper  to  a  crisis,  and  that  may  cure  him. 
Of  all  lying,  I  have  the  greatest  abhorrence  of  this, 
because  I  believe  it  has  been  frequently  practised 
on  myself.'  l 

According  to  Walpole's  Correspondence,  the 
*  Heaven-born  Wilkes  ',  as  Hogarth  called  him, 
might  have  been  one  of  Heberden's  patients  had  he 
not  declined  that  advantage.  In  April  1763  he 
had  been  committed  to  the  Tower  for  imputing 
falsehood  to  George  III  in  No.  45  of  the  North 
Briton ;  but,  as  all  the  world  knows,  had  been 
released  in  the  Court  of  Common  Pleas  on  pleading 
•privilege  of  Parliament.  When  the  House  of 
Commons  reassembled  in  November  1763  he  was 
challenged  by  a  choleric  West  Indian  named  Martin, 
whom  he  had  libelled,  and  on  the  16th  of  that 
month  fought  a  duel  with  him  in  Hyde  Park,  and 
was  severely  wounded  in  the  side.  His  medical 
attendant  was  Dr.  Brocklesby  (the  '  Rock  less  B  ' 
of  the  wits) ;  but  the  House  commissioned  Dr. 
Heberden  and  Hawkins  (the  King's  Sergeant- 
surgeon)  to  visit  him.  The  '  idol  of  the  mob  ' 
refused  to  see  them,  and  to  '  laugh  at  us  more  ', 
writes  Walpole  to  Lord  Hertford,  '  sent  for  two 
Scotchmen,  Duncan  and  Middleton ',  although  he 
had  impudently  postulated,  at  the  time  of  his  com- 
mittal to  the  Tower,  that  he  should  not  be  placed 
in  any  apartment  which  had  been  previously 
tenanted  by  a  Scot.  He  shortly  afterwards  escaped 
to  France.2 

In  December  1780,  when  Johnson's  friend,  Henry 

I  Hill's  BoswelVs  Johnson,  1887,  iv.  306. 

II  Toynbee's  Walpole's  Letters,  vol.  v  ;    Hunt's  History  of 
England,  1760-1801. 


AN  18TH-CENTURY  HIPPOCRATES       41 

Thrale,  had  returned  to  Streatham  with  what  Miss 
Burney  calls  '  that  vile  influenza  ',  his  wife  hastily 
summoned  Heberden  from  town.  As  he  ordered 
'  cupping  ',  and  Miss  Burney  speaks  of  Thrale's  case 
as  precarious,  it  is  probable  that  his  ailment  was  but 
a  premonition  of  that  fatal  seizure  which  took  place 
in  the  following  April,  and  of  which  his  medical 
advisers  had  warned  him  if  he  continued  to  persist 
in  his  unrestrained  indulgence  in  the  pleasures  of 
the  table.  Only  two  days  before  his  death  Dr. 
Johnson  had  said  to  him  at  dinner,  after  witnessing 
his  immoderate  appetite  and  prodigious  draughts  of 
strong  beer  :  '  Sir,  after  the  denunciations  of  your 
physicians  this  morning,  such  eating  is  little  better 
than  suicide.' 

As  already  stated,  it  was  in  1783  that  Heberden 
retired  from  the  active  practice  of  his  profession,  in 
which  by  this  time  he  was  almost  without  a  rival. 
In  the  early  part  of  the  same  year  Johnson's  declin- 
ing health  was  beginning  to  be  a  source  of  appre- 
hension to  his  friends.  '  I  fear  his  constitution  is 
breaking  ',  wrote  Hannah  More.  But  he  was  still 
well  enough  to  act  as  her  escort  at  Oxford  and  to 
exhibit  to  her  his  old  quarters  at  Pembroke,  where, 
in  honour  of  this  dual  visit  of  notabilities,  a  print 
of  the  great  man  was  specially  hung  up  in  the 
Common  Room,  having  under  it,  '  And  is  not 
Johnson  ours  ?  himself  a  host  ' — a  line  from  the 
lady's  poem  of  Sensibility.  Not  long  after  his 
return  from  Oxford,  on  June  17,  he  had  his  first 
paralytic  seizure.  He  immediately  sent  for  his 
neighbour,  Dr.  Brocklesby,  who  lived  hard  by  in 
Norfolk  Street,  and  for  Dr.  Heberden,  under  whose 
joint  care,  aided  by  his  own  robust  constitution,  he 
rapidly  recovered.  On  the  20th  he  had  regained 
his  speech  sufficiently  to  talk  of  Juvenal's  ninth 


42  LATER  ESSAYS 

satire  with  Dr.  Brocklesby  (who,  like  Heberden, 
was  a  '  classic  '),  and  '  to  let  him  see  that  the  pro- 
vince was  mine  ' — as  he  reported  to  Mrs.  Thrale  at 
Bath.  On  the  24th  he  was  watering  his  little 
garden  at  Bolt  Court,  just  as  he  had  watered  the 
laurels  on  '  Dick's  island  '  at  Streatham  ;  and  on 
the  25th  Dr.  Heberden  took  his  leave.  Later  in 
the  year,  in  December,  he  was  attacked  by  dropsy 
and  asthma,  from  which,  after  a  ten  weeks'  con- 
finement, he  again  recovered,  though  he  described 
himself  as  still  '  at  a  great  distance  from  health  '. 
His  appetite,  however,  never  failed,  and  this,  he 
tells  us,  Dr.  Heberden  ahvays  regarded  as  a  favour- 
able sign.  He  considered  it,  says  Johnson,  in  what 
are  assuredly  his  own  words,  as  indicating  that 
Nature  had  not  in  despair  yielded  up  her  power  to 
the  force  of  the  disease.  He  was,  however,  seventy- 
four,  and  his  life  was  not  to  be  prolonged.  Before 
the  year  closed  his  ailments  returned,  and  his 
doctors  were  again  in  requisition.  It  is  not  neces- 
sary to  repeat  the  oft-told  story  of  his  death.  But 
it  is  pleasant  to  think  that  he  retained  his  powers 
until  the  end  ;  that  he  was  still  able  to  discuss 
Shakespeare  with  Dr.  Brocklesby,  and  '  the  An- 
tients  '  with  Dr.  Heberden,  Avhom  he  characterized 
to  Seward  as  '  ultimus  Romanorum,  the  last  of  the 
learned  physicians  ', x  although,  in  the  matter  of 
dropsical  incisions,  he  looked  upon  him  as  '  titni- 
dorum  timidissimus  '.  He  retained  his  wonderful 
memory  and  his  humour  so  far  as  to  repeat,  only 
a  few  days  before  he  died,  when  he  had  been 
secretly  trying  some  remedy  of  his  own,  the  lines 
of  Swift  : 

The  doctors,  tender  of  their  fame, 

Wisely  on  me  lay  all  the  blame  : 

1  Biographiana,  p.  601. 


AN  18TH-CENTURY  HIPPOCRATES       43 

'  We  must  confess,  his  case  was  nice  ; 
But  he  would  never  take  advice. 
Had  he  been  ruled,  for  aught  appears, 
He  might  have  lived  these  twenty  years.' 

By  a  codicil  to  his  will  he  left  to  Drs.  Heberden 
and  Brocklesby,  and  his  surgeon  Mr.  Cruikshank, 
'  each  a  book  at  their  election  to  keep  as  a  token 
of  remembrance '.  Heberden  and  Brocklesby  refused 
payment  for  their  services.  Heberden,  indeed,  must 
have  been  quixotic  in  this  way,  for  he  declined  to 
take  a  fee  from  Eldon  because  he  had  written 
a  brilliant  essay  at  Oxford. 

Of  Heberden's  remaining  patients  of  consequence, 
the  chief  were  Mrs.  Delany  and  George  III.  He 
attended  the  former  at  Windsor  in  1787,  when  she 
had  suffered,  in  Miss  Burney's  mysterious  words, 
'  a  mental  distress  ',  which  threw  her  into  a  fever 
she  rapidly  recovered  from.  She  was  then  eighty- 
six,  and  she  died  on  April  10  in  the  following  year. 
In  July  1788  King  George  III  showed  symptoms  of 
indisposition  ;  and  the  Royal  Household  migrated 
to  the  curative  waters  of  Cheltenham.  In  November, 
when  they  had  returned  to  Windsor,  he  was  again 
unwell  ;  and  Dr.  Heberden  was  called  in  for  con- 
sultation with  the  Queen's  Physician,  then  Sir 
George  Baker.  There  is  not  much  in  Fanny's 
Diary  about  Heberden's  ministrations,  but  what 
there  is  deserves  mention.  It  became  a  part  of  her 
duty  to  carry  to  Queen  Charlotte,  who  was  ill  in 
the  next  room,  periodical  reports  of  His  Majesty  : 
'  I  am  not  ill,  but  I  am  nervous  [she  heard  him  say 
to  his  doctors]  :  if  you  would  know  what  is  the 
matter  with  me,  I  am  nervous.  But  I  love  you 
both  very  well ;  if  you  would  tell  me  truth  :  I  love 
Dr.  Heberden  best,  for  he  has  not  told  me  a  lie  : 


44  LATER  ESSAYS 

Sir  George  has  told  me  a  lie — a  white  lie,  he  says, 
but  I  hate  a  white  lie  !  If  you  will  tell  me  a  lie, 
let  it  be  a  black  lie  !  '  1  A  fortnight  later  the  Royal 
Household  was  transferred  to  Kew,  and  the  King 
passed  practically  to  the  care  of  the  Willises,  father 
and  son. 

The  preceding  notes — it  should  be  admitted — 
form  but  a  slender  foundation  on  which  to  build 
a  personality  ;  and  it  would,  no  doubt,  have  been 
interesting  to  hear  from  Heberden  directly  some- 
thing of  his  patients  and  their  humours.  But  these 
are  obviously  secrets  which  the  discreet  physician 
confides  to  his  notebook,  and  withholds  from  the 
curious.  As  regards  Heberden  himself  it  is,  how- 
ever, amply  clear,  from  the  particulars  collected, 
that  he  possessed  many  sterling  qualities  which 
fully  justified  his  popularity  with  his  contemporaries. 
He  was  a  thoroughly  worthy  man,  of  sound  principle 
and  stainless  integrity ;  beneficent  as  well  as 
benevolent ;  conscientiously  devoted  to  the  practice 
and  promotion  of  the  calling  which  had  made  him 
rich,  and  also  (what  is  more  to  the  purpose  of  this 
paper)  a  genuine  lover  of  books  and  a  generous 
patron  of  letters.  Pope  was  dead  when  he  moved 
to  London,  or,  like  Mead  and  Cheselden,  he  might 
have  been  commemorated  in  a  couplet 

(I'll  do  what  Mead  and  Cheselden  advise, 

To  keep  these  limbs,  and  to  preserve  these  eyes)  ; 

or  he  might  have  prompted  an  '  Epistle  to  Dr. 
Heberden  '  on  the  model  of  the  famous  '  Epistle  to 
Dr.  Arbuthnot  '.  Writing  to  Ralph  Allen  late  in 
life,  Pope  is  quoted  as  saying,  with  reference  to  the 
kind  treatment  he  had  received  from  the  faculty, 
'  They  are  in  general  the  most  amiable  companions 

1  Burney  Diary,  1905,  iv.  136. 


AN  18TH-CENTURY  HIPPOCRATES       45 

and  the  best  friends,  as  well  as  the  most  learned 
men  I  know.'  1  He  would  certainly  not  have  denied 
these  attributes  to  our  '  eighteenth-century  Hippo- 
crates '. 

. 

1  Account  of  Pope  in  An  Excursion  to  Windsor,  &c.,  by 
John  Evans,  LL.D.,  2nd  ed.,  1827,  p.  136. 


4  HERMES'   HARRIS 

IN  May  1775,  Sir  Isaac  Newton's  old  house  in 
St.  Martin's  Street,  Leicester  Square,  then  tenanted 
by  the  Burney  family,  was  the  scene  of  one  of  those 
musical  evenings  which,  after  long  cessation,  had 
again  become  fashionable.  The  not-too-spacious 
drawing-room  had  been  enlarged  by  opening  the 
folding-doors  into  the  back-room  or  library,  where 
the  harpsichords  of  the  performers  were  usually 
placed,  and  we  must  imagine  Dr.  Burney,  music- 
roll  in  hand  as  Reynolds  depicts  him,  welcoming 
the  guests  who  climbed  the  narrow  oak  staircase 
leading  to  the  first  floor.  We  must  also  imagine  his 
daughter  Fanny,  from  some  shy  coign  of  vantage 
in  the  background,  taking  careful  note  of  each  new- 
comer, in  order  to  make  exact  report  of  the  occasion 
to  her  kind  old  Mentor  at  Chessington — the  '  Daddy  ' 
Crisp  of  her  Diary.  The  concert  was  begun  by  the 
Welsh  harper,  Mr.  Jones,  who,  though  in  Fanny's 
opinion  '  a  silly  young  man ',  exhibited  '  great 
neatness  and  delicacy  '  in  handling  his  yet  unpopu- 
larized  instrument.  To  him,  on  the  harpsichord, 
followed  '  Mr.  Burney '  (i.  e.  Charles  Rousseau 
Burney,  Dr.  Burney's  son-in-law),  playing  '  with 
his  usual  successful  velocity  and  his  usual  applause  '. 
His  place  was  taken  by  the  Danish  Ambassador's 
wife,  the  pretty  and  accomplished  Baroness  Deiden, 
who,  having  volubly  protested  (in  French)  that  after 
such  a  master  her  attempts  would  resemble  those 
of  a  figurante  following  the  popular  danseuse, 
Mile  Heinel,  consented  to  enthral  the  audience. 
(She  was,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  one  of  the  most 
brilliant  lady  harpsichord-players  in  Europe.) 


'  HERMES  '  HARRIS  47 

Hetty  Burney,  Fanny's  eldest  sister,  came  next 
with  a  slow  movement  of  Echard's — '  to  avoid 
emulation  '  ;  and  she  was  succeeded  by  Miss  Louisa 
Harris,  a  pupil  of  Sacchini,  one  of  whose  songs 
she  sang,  supplementing  it  with  a  rondeau  from 
the  Piramo  e  Tisbe  of  Rauzzini,  Fanny's  idol.  The 
closing  piece,  however,  which  the  diarist  italicizes 
as  the  great  Feast  of  the  evening,  was  MiitheFs 
duet  for  two  harpsichords,1  the  executants  being 
Hetty  Burney  and  her  husband,  the  '  Mr.  Burney  ' 
above-mentioned,  who  was  also  her  cousin.  '  It 
is  impossible  ',  says  the  sisterly  chronicler,  '  for 
admiration  to  exceed  what  the  company  in  general 
expressed.  .  .  .  Mr.  HARRIS,  and,  indeed,  everybody, 
appeared  enchanted.'  The  '  Mr.  Harris  '  on  whom 
the  distinction  of  capitals  is  here  conferred,  was  the 
father  of  Sacchini's  '  singing  scholar  ',  Miss  Louisa 
Harris.  He  had,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  played  the 
accompaniment  to  his  daughter's  song.  At  this 
date  he  was  a  man  of  sixty-five,  M.P.  for  Christ- 
church,  Hants,  a  former  Lord  of  the  Admiralty 
and  Treasury,  and,  by  recent  appointment,  Secretary 
and  Comptroller  of  the  Household  to  Her  Majesty 
Queen  Charlotte.  Besides  being  a  recognized 
authority  on  Art,  Music,  and  Poetry,  he  was  a  sound 
classical  scholar  and  a  learned  philologist  and 
grammarian.  He  was  generally  known,  from  his 
chief  work,  as  '  Hermes  '  Harris.  To  him — but 
perhaps  more  as  an  eighteenth-century  personality 

1  This,  in  a  later  soiree,  was  repeated  for  the  gratification 
of  the  famous  Count  Orloff.  On  learning  that  the  players 
were  husband  and  wife,  he  exclaimed  to  Mrs.  Burney  : 
'  Mais  qu'a  produit  tant  d'harmonie  ?  '  To  which  the 
blushing  and  flustered  Hetty  could  only  reply  confusedly  : 
'  Rien,  Monseigneur,  que  trois  enfants ' — an  answer  which 
greatly  diverted  the  Russian  man-mountain,  who  was 
'  addicted  to  pleasantry  '. 


48  LATER  ESSAYS 

of  the  better  type  than  as  an  author,  and  not 
omitting  what  he  himself  would  have  called  some 
'  collateral  expatiation  '  into  his  recently  established 
relations  with  his  contemporary,  Henry  Fielding — 
it  is  designed  to  devote  this  paper. 

As  regards  rank  and  fortune,  James  Harris  of 
Salisbury  might  fairly  claim  to  meet  all  the  super- 
ficial requirements  of  Defoe  in  his  definition  of  the 
'  Compleat  Gentleman  '  of  the  day.  From  his 
father,  who  belonged  to  an  old  Wiltshire  family,  he 
inherited  a  competency,  while  his  mother  was  the 
Lady  Elizabeth  Ashley,  third  daughter  of  Anthony, 
second  Earl  of  Shaftesbury,  and  sister  to  that 
illustrious  author  of  the  Characteristics  who  is 
commonly  credited,  among  other  things,  with  the 
fortunate  promoting  of  '  miscellaneous  writing  '. 
Harris's  father's  house  at  Salisbury — or,  as  it  was 
then  called,  New  Sarum — was  an  '  ancient  mansion  ' 
in  the  Cathedral  Close,  adjoining  St.  Ann's  Gate. 
It  had  been  held  under  the  Church  by  the  family 
since  1660,  and  is  described  as  '  grafted  upon  and 
including  part  of  the  old  ramparts  .  .  .  with  a  regular 
warren  of  rooms  on  many  levels  '.  Here  he  was 
born,  July  20,  1709.  Of  his  youthful  days  no 
particulars  are  preserved  by  his  devoted  son  and 
biographer,  the  first  Earl  of  Malmesbury  ;  but  if 
the  child  be  father  to  the  man,  he  belonged,  in  all 
likelihood,  to  that  quieter  type  of  schoolboy  which 
is  reckoned  to  be  '  better  at  books  than  games  '. 
He  went  early  to  the  grammar  school  in  the  Close, 
where  Addison,  who  hailed  from  the  neighbouring 
rectory  of  Milston,  had  formerly  been  a  pupil,  and 
the  master  of  which  was  the  Rev.  Richard  Hele, 
whom  Keightley,  in  1858,  relying  on  the  then- 
current  Salisbury  tradition,  regarded  as  the  proto- 
type of  Fielding's  *  Parson  Thwackum  '.  But,  apart 


'HERMES'  HARRIS  49 

from  the  fact  that  the  author  of  Tom  Jones  specifi- 
cally disclaims  personal  portraiture,1  and  also  refers 
his  readers  for  the  outward  semblance  of  Thwackum 
to  a  personage  in  one  of  Hogarth's  prints,  recent 
investigations  2  have  proved  conclusively  that  there 
is  no  real  affinity  between  Thwackum  and  Mr.  Hele, 
whose  biography  shows  him  to  have  been  a  '  man 
of  the  highest  character,  and  utterly  dissimilar  to 
Thwackum  in  every  respect  ',  while  Lord  Malmes- 
bury  says  expressly  that  he  was  long  known  and 
honoured  in  the  West  of  England  as  '  an  instructor 
of  youth  '.  Neither  can  Fielding  have  seen  much 
of  Hele,  since  from  1719  to  1725  he  himself  was 
at  Eton,  under  Dr.  Bland.  At  the  same  time, 
Fielding  was  probably  well  acquainted  with  the 
Harris  circle,  as  he  generally  spent  his  holidays 
at  New  Sarum  with  his  maternal  grandmother, 
Lady  Gould,  who  lived  in  St.  Martin's  Church  Street, 
between  St.  Mary's  Home  and  the  Church.3  This 
acquaintance,  of  course,  is  merely  conjectural ;  but, 
as  will  be  plain,  there  is  good  evidence  that  Harris 
and  Fielding  were  on  intimate  terms  in  later  years. 
And  it  is  worth  noting  that  the  three  Miss  Cradocks, 
one  of  whom  Fielding  afterwards  married,  lived 
opposite  the  Harris  mansion  in  the  Close.4 

In  1725,  when  Harris  was  sixteen,  he  left  the 
Cathedral  School  for  the  University,  and  went  to 
Wadham  College,  Oxford.  Like  his  co-eval,  Lyttel- 
ton,  he  entered  as  a  gentleman  commoner  ;  and, 
as  in  Lyttelton's  case,  there  is  no  record  of  his 

1  Joseph  Andrews,  Bk.  Ill,  chap.  i. 

2  '  Fisldingiana,'  by  Mr.  J.  Paul  de  Castro,  Notes  and 
Queries,  November  1917,  p.  467. 

3  Ibid.,  p.  468. 

4  Mary  Penelope,   one  of  the  sisters,  and  perhaps  the 
eldest,  died  in  October  1729,  at  the  age  of  twenty-four,  and 
was  buried  in  the  choir  of  the  Cathedral  (ibid.,  p.  467). 

E 


50  LATER  ESSAYS 

academic  life.  When  he  had  duly  matriculated, 
his  father  sent  him  to  Lincoln's  Inn — '  not  intending 
him  ',  says  Lord  Malmesbury,  '  for  the  Bar,  but, 
as  was  a  common  practice,  meaning  to  make  the 
study  of  the  law  a  part  of  his  education '.  When 
he  was  twenty-four  his  father  died — an  event 
which,  by  rendering  him  independent,  left  him  free 
to  follow  his  own  inclinations.  He  accordingly 
returned  from  London  to  Salisbury,  taking  up  his 
permanent  abode  in  the  paternal  house  in  the  Close. 
His  bent  had  always  been  to  Greek  and  Latin 
literature,  which  he  now  proceeded  to  study 
assiduously — rising  often,  his  biographer  tells  us, 
at  four  or  five  on  a  winter's  morning  in  order  to 
secure  the  requisite  quiet  and  seclusion.  This,  for 
the  next  fourteen  or  fifteen  years,  was  the  main 
business  of  his  life.  But,  being  still  well  under 
middle  age,  he  did  not,  on  this  account,  in  any  way 
withdraw  himself  from  social  entertainments.  In 
common  with  his  father,  he  was  passionately  fond 
of  music,  and  generally  played  an  active  part  in 
the  diversions  of  the  Wiltshire  capital.  As  might 
be  anticipated  from  his  legal  training,  he  also 
officiated  regularly  as  a  county  magistrate,  earning 
in  that  capacity  a  reputation  for  much  more  than 
merely  decorative  efficiency. 

The  outcome  of  his  prolonged  devotion  to  the 
study  of  the  classics  was  a  volume  entitled  Three 
Treatises — the  first  of  them  being  '  A  Dialogue 
concerning  Art  '  ;  the  second,  '  A  Discourse  of  Art, 
Painting,  and  Poetry  '  ;  and  the  third,  '  A  Dialogue 
concerning  Happiness  '.  The  book  appeared  in 
1744,  and  was  decorated  with  a  highly  emblematical 
frontispiece  by  James  Stuart  (the  subsequently 
famous  '  Athenian  Stuart  '),  in  which  Virtue  is 
represented  crowning  Nature — both  crowner  and 


;  HERMES  '  HARRIS  51 

crowned  being,  quite  needlessly,  described  as  '  after 
the  antique  '.  The  initial  dialogue,  dedicated  to 
the  writer's  relative,  the  Earl  of  Shaftesbury, 
purports  to  be  the  result  of  an  excursion  by  two 
friends  to  Lord  Pembroke's  seat  at  Wilton,  three 
miles  from  Salisbury,  and  is  devoted  to  the  discussion 
of  Art  in  the  abstract.  The  discourse  that  follows 
deals  at  large  with  its  main  divisions  ;  and  the 
concluding  treatise  '  professes  to  prove  that  the 
Perfection  and  Happiness  of  Human  Nature  are 
only  to  be  obtained  through  the  medium  of  a  moral 
and  virtuous  Life  '.  To  give  an  exhaustive  account 
of  the  whole  in  this  place  is  neither  essential  nor 
practicable  ;  but  it  may  fairly  be  granted  that 
when  (as  the  writer's  son  reports)  Lord  Monboddo 
commended  the  first  Dialogue  for  its  excellent 
4  dividing  or  diaeretic  manner  ',  it  is  difficult  to 
gainsay  his  lordship,  still  less  to  deny  the  undoubted 
erudition  ('  bullion  '  Johnson  would  have  called 
it)  of  the  subject-matter.  But,  in  these  hand-to- 
mouth  days,  it  is  a  book  more  likely  to  be  pillaged 
than  perused. 

To  return  for  a  moment  to  Fielding.  Beyond 
the  love-verses  to  '  Celia  '  (Charlotte  Cradock), 
whom  he  had  married  in  1734,  there  is  apparently 
little  to  connect  him  with  Salisbury  up  to  1743, 
although  it  is  clear  he  must  often  have  visited  that 
town  after  his  grandmother's  death.  But  an 
unmistakable  allusion  to  Harris  in  the  '  Essay  on 
Conversation  '  shows  that  either  in  London  or 
Wiltshire  they  must  have  maintained  relations. 
Fielding  twice  expressly  speaks  in  this  paper  of 
'  my  Friend,  the  Author  of  an  Inquiry  into  Happi- 
ness ',  as  having  sufficiently  and  admirably  proved 
that  man  is  a  social  animal  ;  and,  in  a  note  to  the 
first  mention  of  that  '  excellent  author  ',  adds  that 

E  2 


52  LATER  ESSAYS 

the  treatise  here  indicated  is  not  yet  published, 
thus  making  it  clear  that  he  had  read  the  book  in 
manuscript,  as  the  Miscellanies  (which  included  the 
*  Essay  on  Conversation  ')  were  issued  in  April  1743. 
And  this  brings  us  to  a  hitherto-doubtful  point  in 
Fielding's  biography,  which,  as  it  is  distinctly 
connected  with  Harris,  may  excusably  be  dealt 
with  here. 

In  a  letter  written  by  Fielding  from  Lisbon  in 
1754  to  his  brother  John,  the  major  portion  of  which 
was  printed  in  the  National  Review  for  August  1911, 
advantage  was  taken  of  the  mutilated  manuscript 
to  omit  certain  passages  which  at  that  time  it  was 
held  inexpedient  to  publish,  because,  without  some 
explanation  not  then  forthcoming,  they  were  so 
obscure  as  to  mislead.  Fielding,  it  may  be  remem- 
bered, was  much  annoyed  by  the  proceedings  of 
Miss  Margaret  Collier,  who  had  accompanied  him 
to  Lisbon  as  companion  to  his  wife  and  daughter. 
One  of  his  utterances  referred  to  the  '  obligations 
she  and  her  Family  have  to  me,  who  had  an  Execu- 
tion taken  out  against  me  for  400Z.  for  which 
I  became  Bail  for  her  Brother  '.  No  allusion  to 
this  incident  was  to  be  traced  in  any  then-available 
Fielding  records,  and  it  could  neither  be  confuted 
nor  confirmed.  For  this  reason,  pending  inquiry, 
the  sentence  was  withheld.  Since  then  the  facts 
have  been  fully  ascertained.  They  may  be  sum- 
marized as  follows  :  In  1745,  Margaret  Collier's 
brother  was  proceeded  against  at  Westminster  by 
one  Tristram  Walton  for  a  debt  of  £400  which  he 
could  not  be  persuaded  to  pay.  The  plaintiff 
obtained  special  bail,  and  the  special  bails,  or 
'  Pledges  ',  were  James  Harris,  of  the  City  of  New 
Sarum  in  Wilts,  and  Henry  Fielding,  of  Boswell 
Court,  in  the  Parish  of  St.  Clement  Danes,  in  the 


'  HERMES  '  HARRIS  53 

County  of  Middlesex.  The  case  was  tried  ;  but 
Collier,  who  was  a  Doctor  of  Civil  Law,  '  demurred  ', 
in  order  to  stave  off  the  day  of  reckoning,  with  the 
consequences  to  Fielding  above  indicated,  the  main 
burden  of  which  seems  to  have  fallen  on  him, 
perhaps, — it  has  been  suggested — because  the 
Sheriff  thought  one  man  in  London  was  worth  two 
in  Wiltshire.1  At  all  events  the  result  gave  Fielding 
good  reason  for  writing  in  the  Lisbon  letter,  that  he 
hated  Collier's  very  name. 

The  Dr.  Arthur  Collier  who  figures  in  the  above 
trial,  and  who  is  elsewhere  described  '  as  an  ingenious, 
but  unsteady  and  eccentric  man  ',  had  long  resided 
in  Salisbury,  where  his  father,  the  metaphysician 
and  Rector  of  Langford  Magna,  died  in  1732.  This 
circumstance,  coupled  with  the  fact  that  he  was 
a  subscriber  to  Fielding's  Miscellanies  of  1743, 
sufficiently  accounts  for  the  presence  as  his  '  Pledges  ' 
of  Fielding  and  also  of  Harris,  to  whom  we  come 
again.  In  1745,  being  then  thirty-six,  Harris 

1  '  Fielding  and  the  Collier  Family,'  by  Mr.  J.  Paul  de 
Castro,  Notes  and  Queries,  August  5,  1916.  I  must  here 
frankly  acknowledge  my  obligations  to  Mr.  de  Castro  for 
the  above  details.  The  war  has  ruthlessly  hung  up  his  long- 
projected  biography  of  Fielding.  But  as  a  compensation, 
the  temporary  set-back  has  only  served  to  extend  and 
invigorate  his  untiring  researches.  There  are  other  workers 
in  this  unexhausted  mine  from  whom  something  may  be 
expected.  Professor  Edwin  Wells,  and  Professor  Gerard 
Jensen  of  Philadelphia,  have  been  profitably  employed  in 
the  same  direction  ;  while  beside  and  behind  them  (with  all 
the  resources  of  the  Dickson  gift  of  Fielding  books  to  Yale 
University  Library)  is  Professor  Wilbur  L.  Cross,  of  the 
Life  of  Sterne  (1909),  who  has  long  had  a  companion  study  of 
Fielding  in  contemplation.  Yale,  indeed,  has  always  been 
friendly  to  Fielding,  for  the  late  Professor  T.  R.  Lounsbury, 
Professor  Cross's  predecessor  in  the  Chair  of  English,  was 
one  of  his  most  fervent  admirers.  [Dean  Cross's  book  has 
since  appeared,  Sept.  1918.] 


54  LATER  ESSAYS 

married  Elizabeth,  the  daughter  and  eventual 
heiress  of  John  Clarke,  of  Sandford  near  Bridgwater 
in  Somerset,  by  whom  he  had  five  children,  three  of 
whom  survived  him — namely,  two  daughters, 
Gertrude  and  the  Louisa  whose  vocal  talents  have 
already  been  celebrated,  and  a  son,  James,  after- 
wards the  distinguished  diplomatist  who  became 
first  Earl  of  Malmesbury.  It  is  to  the  Letters  of 
Lord  Malmesbury,  his  Family  and  Friends,  1870,  that 
one  must  look  henceforth  for  the  scant  particulars 
respecting  his  father.  The  first  volume  covers  the 
period  from  1745,  the  year  of  Harris's  marriage, 
to  1794  ;  and,  as  Harris  died  in  1780,  includes  the 
remainder  of  his  life.  His  own  letters,  in  this 
collection,  are  largely  concerned  with  business 
matters  or  minor  contemporary  politics,  and  cold 
contemporary  politics,  except  to  those  who  are 
really  sharp-set,  are  the  coldest  of  collations.  Those 
of  his  wife  to  her  son,  with  his  replies,  being  on 
diverse  topics,  are  more  interesting.  Mrs.  Harris 
is  not  a  Sevigne,  or  even  a  Lady  Mary ;  but  she 
is  chatty  and  readable,  and  the  young  man  who 
received  her  nouvelles  a  la  main  at  Oxford  or 
Madrid,  at  Berlin  or  St.  Petersburg,  must  have 
rejoiced  in  the  possession  of  so  '  corresponding  ' 
a  mother. 

After  the  three  Treatises,  and  previously  to  the 
publication  of  what  must  be  regarded  as  Harris's 
chief  work  of  Hermes,  1751,  there  is  no  evidence  of 
any  special  literary  activity  on  his  part,  with  the 
exception  of  two  short  dialogues  contributed 
anonymously  to  the  Familiar  Letters  beticeen  tJie 
Principal  Cfiaracters  in  David  Simple  by  Fielding's 
sister  Sarah,  a  book  she  published  in  1747,  as  a  sequel 
to  an  earlier  novel.  These  dialogues,  '  Much  Ado  ' 
and  '  Fashion ',  are  assigned  to  Harris  on  the 


'  HERMES  '  HARRIS  55 

authority  of  Johnson,  who  read  them  to  Fanny 
Burney  and  Mrs.  Thrale  many  years  afterwards, 
and  they  are  dated  respectively  1744  and  1746. 
They  certainly  disclose  '  a  sportive  humour  '  which 
one  at  least  of  the  Doctor's  listeners  seems  to  have 
thought  unexpected  in  a  '  learned  grammarian  '. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  '  learned  grammarian  '  is 
formidably  to  the  fore  in  Hermes,  the  sub-title  of 
which  sufficiently  explains  its  theme.  It  is  A  Philo- 
sophical Inquiry  concerning  Universal  Grammar,  and, 
on  this  ground,  very  properly  called  after  Mercury. 
It  is  dedicated  to  the  first  Earl  of  Hardwicke  ;  and, 
like  the  preceding  Treatises,  is  embellished  by  the 
'  Attic  and  simple  '  taste  of  '  Athenian  '  Stuart 
with  a  cryptic  frontispiece.  The  plan  and  method 
of  the  author  are  extremely  orderly  and  elaborate  ; 
but  to  any  save  the  forced  student  of  a  difficult 
subject  he  will  seem  to  be  inconveniently  learned. 
As  to  his  ultimate  conclusions,  opinions  differ.  In 
his  Preface  he  speaks  of  his  efforts  as  tentative  ; 
but  later  scholars  have  not  serupled  to  dismiss  them 
less  indulgently.  Nevertheless  his  own  contemporary, 
Bishop  Lowth,  who,  being  a  philologist,  should 
have  been  a  competent  critic,  extolled  him  extrava- 
gantly. '  Those  [he  declared]  who  would  enter 
clearly  into  this  subject  will  find  it  fully  and  accurate- 
ly handled  with  the  greatest  acuteness  of  investiga- 
tion, perspicuity  of  explication  and  elegance  of 
method  in  a  treatise  entitled  Hermes  by  James 
Harris,  Esq.'  And  he  goes  on  to  compare 
him  with  Aristotle ; l  praise  which  should  have 
been  peculiarly  grateful  to  Harris,  who  was 

1  Lowth's  opinion  was  endorsed  by  Coleridge,  who  says 
that  Hermes  is  written  '  with  the  precision  of  Aristotle  and 
the  elegance  of  Quintilian'.  (Boswell's  Johnson,  Globe  ed., 
p.  255  n.) 


56  LATER  ESSAYS 

certainly  sealed  of  those  who,  as  Boileau  says,  hold 
that 

sans  Aristote 
La  raison  ne  voit  goutte,  et  le  bon  sens  radote. 

In  the  Co-vent  Garden  Journal  for  March  14,  1752, 
Fielding,  who  had  no  doubt  read  the  book,  like  its 
predecessor,  in  proof  or  manuscript,  gives  it,  as 
might  be  expected,  his  Censorial  benediction,  ac- 
companied by  a  respectfully  elaborate  analysis.  On 
the  other  hand,  Gray  sneered  at  it  to  Norton 
Nicholls  as  a  sample  of  the  '  shallow  profound  ', 
while  Johnson  grumbled  to  Boswell  that  the  author 
did  not  understand  his  own  system,  and  was  himself 
a  grammatical  castaway.  These  contradictions 
almost  justify  a  perplexed  biographer  in  taking 
refuge  behind  the  comfortable  ruling  that  he  is 
not  bound  to  do  more  than  set  forth  correctly  the 
conditions  in  which  a  work  of  art  is  produced.  The 
fact,  however,  seems  to  be  that  Hermes  is  a  very 
scholarly  and  sincere  production  ;  but  inexorably 
rigid  and  academic.  It  nevertheless  brought  its 
author  a  deserved  reputation  for  solidity  of  learning. 
And  besides  being  a  treasury  of  out-of-the-way 
quotation,  it  is  undoubtedly  a  prolonged  protest 
against  '  the  bigoted  contempt  of  everything  not 
modern  ',  and  a  serious  defence  of  the  neglected 
wisdom  of  the  ancients. 

Those  who  can  refer  to  the  not-very-accessible 
file  of  the  Covent  Garden  Journal  will  discover,  at 
no  great  distance  from  the  number  containing  its 
friendly  notice  of  Hermes,  or  on  April  14  following, 
a  leader  entitled  '  A  Dialogue  at  Tunbridge  Wells 
between  a  Philosopher  and  a  Fine  Lady  '.  This  has 
a  curious  air  of  relationship  to  the  dialogues  Harris 
contributed  to  Sarah  Fielding's  sequel  to  David 
Simple.  It  is  initialed  '  J  '  (James  ?),  and  may  well 


'  HERMES  '  HARRIS  57 

be  Harris's  return  for  the  Journal  article  ;  but  the 
only  printed  effort  which  can  be  definitely  assigned 
to  Harris  in  the  next  ten  years  is  a  negligible 
'  Fragment  of  Chaucer '  in  the  fifth  volume  of 
Dodsley's  Collection,  1758.  The  same  volume, 
however,  contains  a  batch  of  epigrams  from  Martial 
which  are  dedicated  '  To  James  Harris,  Esq.'  in 
the  following  not  inapt  imitation  of  Bk.  iv,  Ep.  87, 
on  Apollinaris  : 

Wou'dst  thou,  by  Attic  taste  approv'd, 

By  all  be  read,  by  all  be  lov'd, 

To  learned  Harris'  curious  eye, 

By  me  ad  vis 'd,  dear  Muse,  apply. 

In  him  the  perfect  judge  you'll  find, 

In  him  the  candid  friend,  and  kind. 

If  he  repeats,  if  he  approves, 

If  he  the  laughing  muscles  moves, 

Thou  nor  the  critic's  sneer  shal'st  mind, 

Nor  be  to  pies  or  trunks  consign'd, 

If  he  condemns,  away  you  fly, 

And  mount  in  paper  kites  the  sky, 

Or  dead  'mongst  Grub  Street's  records  lye. 

The  writer  of  these  verses  was  the  Rev.  John 
Hoadly,  Chancellor  of  Winchester  and  youngest 
son  of  that  portly  and  prosperous  prelate,  painted 
by  Hogarth,  who,  from  1723  to  1734,  presided  over 
the  Episcopal  palace  in  Sarum  Close,  and,  with  his 
family,  must  have  been  well  known  to  the  dwellers 
at  St.  Ann's  Gate.  John  Hoadly  is  now  chiefly 
remembered  by  the  couplets  he  wrote  to  '  moralize  ' 
Hogarth's  Rake's  Progress ;  and  by  the  epitaph, 
often  erroneously  attributed  to  his  father,  which 
he  composed  for  Sarah  Fielding's  memorial  in  the 
Abbey  Church  at  Bath.  Though,  as  became 
a  bishop's  son,  he  was  a  pluralist,  he  had  also,  like 


58  LATER  ESSAYS 

his  brother,  the  author  of  The  Suspicious  Husband, 
strong  dramatic  instincts  ;  and  he  was  of  sufficient 
literary  importance  in  1757  to  be  invited  to  collect 
contributions  for  his  friend  Dodsley.  It  is  evident 
also  from  his  letter  to  the  publisher  in  October  of 
that  year  x  that  among  those  he  sent  in  was  the 
Chaucerian  fragment  of  his  friend  Mr.  Harris. 

When  Harris  composed  the  solitary  dramatic 
piece  referred  to  in  the  Malmesbury  correspondence 
as  '  a  Pastoral,  called  Damon  and  Amaryllis  ',2  does 
not  appear.  But  three  letters  from  Garrick  to  the 
author  in  1762  make  it  plain  that  '  Roscius  '  had 
visited  Harris  at  Salisbury,  and  that  the  main  object 
of  the  production  of  the  piece  at  Drury  Lane,  then 
in  hot  rivalry  with  Covent  Garden,  was  to  secure 
the  debut  in  the  metropolis  of  '  Master  Norris  ', 
a  pupil  of  Arne  and  a  chorister  at  Salisbury  Cathedral, 
in  whose  fortunes"  Harris  was  greatly  interested. 
Garrick  duly  brought  out  the  pastoral  on  Septem- 
ber 22,  1762,  in  which  year  it  was  printed  under 
the  title  of  The  Spring.  By  this  date,  however, 
Harris  had  entered  public  life.  Hitherto  he  had 
lived  quietly  in  the  house  in  the  Close,  with  occasional 
migration  to  a  country-box  among  the  Avon  trout- 
streams  which  he  possessed  at  Durnford  Magna, 
two  and  a  half  miles  from  Amesbury,  and  to  which 
he  resorted  for  closer  study  and  seclusion.  '  His 
time  ',  says  his  son,  '  was  divided  between  the  care 
of  his  family,  in  which  he  placed  his  chief  happiness, 
his  literary  pursuits,  and  the  society  of  his  friends 
and  neighbours.  .  .  .  The  superior  taste  and  skill 
which  he  possessed  in  music,  and  his  extreme 
fondness  for  hearing  it,  led  him  to  attend  to  its 

1  Dodsley's  Col  ection  of  Poetry,  &c.,  by  W.  P.  Courtney, 
1910,  pp.  102-3. 

*  Letters  of  the  First  Earl  of  Malmesbury,  &c.,  1870,  i,  p.  85. 


'  HERMES  '  HARRIS  59 

cultivation  in  his  native  place  with  uncommon 
pains  and  success,  insomuch  that  under  his  auspices 
.  .  .  the  Annual  Musical  Festival  in  Salisbury 
flourished  beyond  most  institutions  of  the  kind.' 
He  often  adapted  selections  from  Italian  and  German 
composers  to  words  from  the  Bible  and  Paradise 
Lost.  Sometimes  the  settings  were  by  himself,  and 
several  of  these  were  subsequently  issued  in  two 
volumes  by  Joseph  Corfe,  the  Cathedral  organist. 
Others,  when  Lord  Malmesbury  wrote,  were  still 
in  manuscript. 

In  1761,  this  ordered  round  of  days  was  partially 
interrupted.  By  the  interest  of  his  first  cousin, 
Mr.  Edward  Hooper,  Chairman  of  the  Board  of 
Customs,  Harris  was  elected  M.P.  for  Christchurch, 
Hants — a  borough  which  Mr.  Hooper  had  himself 
represented  for  many  years,  and  which  his  successor 
retained  for  the  rest  of  his  life.1  When  Harris 
entered  Parliament  the  Bute  Ministry  was  drawing 
to  a  close  ;  and  after  the  Peace  of  Paris,  so  dex- 
terously engineered  by  the  Due  de  Nivernais,  came 
the  short-lived  Government  of  George  Grenville. 
Harris  was  an  adherent  of  Grenville,  under  whose 
auspices  he,  for  a  brief  space,  became  first  a  Lord 
of  the  Admiralty  and  then  a  Lord  of  the  Treasury  ; 
and  with  Grenville,  he  went  out  of  office.  During 
this  period  he  was  much  in  London  attending 
conscientiously  to  his  official  and  parliamentary 
duties.  He  took  no  great  part  in  debates,  and  never 
became  inoculated  with  the  virus  of  party  spirit. 
He  still  contrived,  whenever  he  returned  to  Salisbury, 
to  maintain  his  old  traditions  as  a  county  magnate, 

1  '  Who  is  this  Harris  ?  '  asked  Charles  Townshend 
(Bute's  Secretary  at  War),  when  the  new  Member  took  his 
seat.  '  He  has  written  on  grammar  and  virtue,'  was  the 
reply.  '  He  will  find  neither  here,'  rejoined  the  wit.  But 
this  was  in  1761  ! 


60  LATER  ESSAYS 

and  continued  his  preparations  for  a  new,  but 
uncompleted,  philosophical  work  on  the  Logic  of 
his  favourite  Aristotle.  It  has  been  said  that  his 
own  contributions  to  the  Malmesbury  Correspondence 
are  few  and  far  between.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
series  is  greatly  enlivened  by  the  epistles  of  his  wife 
to  her  son,  which  begin  in  1763,  not  long  after 
Grenville  had  taken  office.  James  Harris  the 
younger,  having  spent  three  years  at  school  in  the 
Close,  had  passed  to  Winchester,  and  thence  at 
seventeen  to  Merton  College,  where  he  idled  away 
his  time  as  a  gentleman  commoner  in  the  hazardous 
companionship  of  Charles  Fox.  On  June  13  his 
mother  writes  her  first  letter  to  him,  and  the 
correspondence,  with  some  intermissions,  continued 
until  October  1780,  a  short  time  before  her  death. 
To  give  any  adequate  account  of  this  prolonged 
and  exceptional  sequence  of  letters  would  be 
difficult,  and  at  this  date  they  are  sadly  in  want  of 
annotation.  According  to  the  editor,  the  political 
details  are  unusually  trustworthy.  But  the  political 
history  of  the  time  has  been  written  by  the  Greens 
and  Gairdners  ;  what  is  not  written  by  them  is 
the  picturesque  story  of  its  social  and  domestic 
life.  This  Mrs.  Harris,  in  so  far  as  it  comes  within 
her  sphere  of  observation,  relates  effectively. 

Her  note,  as  will  be  seen,  is  struck  from  the  outset. 
One  of  the  earliest  letters  is  dated  from  Pall  Mall, 
and  describes  '  a  most  agreeable  expedition  on  the 
Thames  '.  The  party  go  in  a  common  wherry  from 
Whitehall  to  Pepper  Alley  stairs  by  London  Bridge, 
where  they  re-embark  in  the  Admiralty  barge — 
'  a  commodious  and  highly  finished  thing  ' — for 
Greenwich.  Here  they  visit  the  College,  and  all  to 
be  seen  there,  '  which  is  St.  George's  Hall,  the  Chapel 
and  the  Royal  Charles  ward  '.  Thence  they  go  on 


'  HERMES  '  HARRIS  61 

to  Woolwich,  where  they  are  shown  the  '  gun- 
warren  ',  the  laboratory,  and  the  models  of  ships. 
After  this  they  dine  at  Greenwich  on  the  smallest 
fish  they  ever  saw,  called  whitebait,  in  a  '  charming 
place  in  the  open  air  which  commanded  a  fine  view 
of  the  Thames  '.  But  there  are  drawbacks  to  these 
delights.  The  Admiralty  barge  cannot  shoot  the 
bridge  at  low  water,  and  they  eventually  have  to 
land  and  trudge  home  through  the  Borough. 

A  later  letter  is  divided  between  the  great  storm 
of  1763  (when,  according  to  the  Annual  Register, 
there  were  hailstones  ten  inches  in  circumference  (?)) 
and  a  visit  to  the  Queen's  Palace  to  inquire  after 
the  newly  arrived  Duk,e  of  York  and  Bishop  of 
Osnaburg,1  where  there  is  cake  and  caudle  for  the 
callers,  and  Lady  Weymouth  (the  Duchess  of 
Portland's  daughter)  and  the  Duchess  of  Ancaster 
sit  '  knotting  '  with  '  a  knotting-bag  hanging  on 
their  left  arm  '.  Then  Mrs.  Harris  takes  Gertrude 
and  Louisa  to  see  Arthur  Murphy's  farce  of  The 
Upholsterer  at  Covent  Garden,  where  also  Garrick's 
young  rival,  Powell  (in  Garrick's  absence  on  the 
Continent),  is  making  hay  by  mimicking  the  great 
man's  manner  and  mannerisms.  Powell  is  playing 
Beaumont  and  Fletcher's  Philaster  with  Mrs.  Yates, 
always  a  favourite  with  the  Salisbury  coterie.  In 
another  letter  they  are  watching  the  Lord  Mayor's 
Show,  as  well  as  they  are  able,  from  their  Whitehall 
windows,  and  they  also  see  the  baby  Princes  held 
up  to  public  view  when  King  George  goes  in  his 
new  coach  to  open  Parliament.  Then  comes  the 

1  This  episcopal  dignity  came  to  Frederick  Augustus  in 
his  helpless  cradle,  and  prompted  the  following  anecdote  in 
a  subsequent  letter.  At  the  oratorio  of  Nabal,  the  Princess 
Dowager  asked  Lord  Tyrawly  for  the  story.  His  Lordship, 
not  being  strong  in  Biblical  study,  suggested  that  she  should 
consult  the  Bishop  of  Osnaburg  1 


62  LATER  ESSAYS 

revival  in  November  of  the  North  Briton  scandal 
and  the  duel  of  Wilkes  and  Martin  in  Hyde  Park. 
This  is  succeeded  by  what  must  have  been  a  further 
apparition  in  the  House  of  Commons  of  Pitt,  '  on 
his  crutches  with  his  legs  swathed  in  flannel,  but 
whether  'tis  gout  or  only  to  move  compassion  I  will 
not  pretend  to  say'.  These  nre  but  the  random 
pickings  of  the  half-year  ended  December  1763, 
and  it  may  be  guessed  how  rich  are  the  seventeen 
years  that  follow. 

In  1765  the  Grenville  Government  went  out,  and 
at  the  end  of  the  summer  term  Mrs.  Harris's  son 
leaves  Merton  and  in  September  goes  to  Leyden, 
where  Wilkes  and  Charles  Townshend — to  say 
nothing  of  Fielding  and  Goldsmith — had  been  before 
him.  He  attends  the  lectiones  of  Pestel  and  Run- 
kenius  respectively — the  latter  on  universal  history, 
the  former  on  Grotius's  De  Jure  Belli  et  Pads. 
The  language  of  Runkenius  is  '  rather  low,  and  filled 
with  German  idioms  '  (the  young  man  reports)  ; 
but  he  is  far  more  interesting  than  Pestel.  At 
Leyden  he  makes  considerable  progress  in  Dutch, 
and  is  daily  improving  in  French.  He  stays  a  year 
at  Leyden  and  subsequently  travels  on  the  Continent 
until,  in  1768,  he  is  appointed  by  Lord  Shelburne, 
Secretary  of  Embassy  at  Madrid,  thus  beginning 
his  brilliant  diplomatic  career.  While  he  is  at  Madrid 
his  mother's  letters  are  resumed.  The  '  Wilkes 
and  Liberty '  Riots,  and  the  free  fight  (of  both 
sexes)  over  the  election  of  a  Master  of  the  Cere- 
monies at  Bath  vice  Derrick  deceased,  are  salient 
topics  ;  but  the  only  occurrence  which  concerns 
the  elder  Harris  in  particular  is  the  private  produc- 
tion in  the  chapel-room  at  Salisbury  of  IA  Pastorale 
and  a  Play  '.  The  pastorale  is  clearly  The  Spring 
of  1762,  and  the  play,  which  Mrs.  Harris  omits 


'  HERMES  '  HARRIS  63 

to  name,  must  have  been  that  marmoreal  Creusa, 
Queen  of  Athens,  which  Laureate  Whitehead  had 
based  on  the  Ion  of  Euripides,  and  brought  out  at 
Drury  Lane  in  1754.  The  Queen  (Mrs.  Pritchard's 
original  part)  was  a  local  notability,  Miss  Wyndham 
— as  fine  as  silver  trimmings  and  diamonds  could 
make  her.  Miss  Gertrude  Harris  was  the  priestess  of 
the  piece,  in  a  costume  taken  from  the  antique  under 
the  superintendence  of  Pope's  editor,  Dr.  Joseph 
Warton,  then  Head  Master  of  Winchester.  It  was 
'  not  designed  by  either  milliners  or  mantua-makers  ' 
but  '  quite  simple  and  elegant,  only  fastened  by 
a  row  of  large  pearls  round  the  waist  '.  On  her 
head  she  wore  '  a  kind  of  white  veil,  and  round  it 
a  wreath  of  Alexandrian  laurel  '.  This,  in  an 
anachronistic  age  which  decorated  its  theatrical 
Catos  with  Ramillies  wigs  and  clothed  its  Lears  in 
flowered  dressing-gowns,  was  certainly  a  move  in 
that  right  direction  to  be  later  inaugurated  at 
Drury  Lane  by  Philip  de  Loutherbourg.  Miss  Louisa 
Harris  took  the  part  of  Thyrsus  (Ilyssus  ?)  ;  but 
we  are  expressly  told  that  all  the  '  lady  gentlemen  ' 
(for  there  were  apparently  no  male  performers) 
acted  in  '  Eastern  dresses  with  long  robes  '.  The 
scenes,  '  a  Temple  of  Delphi  '  and  '  a  laurel  Grove  ', 
were  painted  in  part  by  Gertrude  Harris,  which 
discloses  a  fresh  accomplishment  in  this  gifted 
family.  How  the  whole  eventually  went  off  is, 
however,  not  related,  for  they  were  only  rehearsing 
when  Mrs.  Harris  wrote  ;  but  we  learn  incidentally 
that  the  stage  was  nearly  three  feet  high,  and  that 
there  was  room  for  between  forty  and  fifty  spectators, 
as  well  as  space  for  the  orchestra  (led  by  Dr.  Stevens) 
required  for  the  pastorale,  in  which  Gertrude  sang 
a  song  '  very  sweetly  and  in  tune  ',  her  mother 
thought,  though  Louisa  (who  was  a  pupil  of 


64  LATER  ESSAYS 

Sacchini !)  likened  her  sister's  efforts   to   those   of 
a  piping  bullfinch. 

This  was  all  in  1770  ;  and  for  the  next  ten  years 
the  chronicle  continues  to  be  what,  for  our  purpose, 
can  only  be  regarded  as  irrelevant  chit-chat.  There 
is  plenty  of  gossip  about  Ranelagh  and  the  Pantheon ; 
about  Bach's  concerts  and  Handel's  oratorios  ; 
about  further  theatricals  at  Salisbury,  at  Winterslow 
(Lord  Holland's),1  and  at  Wilton  (Lord  Pembroke's)  ; 
about  the  Perreau  and  Kingston  trials,  and — it 
must  be  admitted — about  a  good  deal  more  that 
Mr.  Charles  Yellowplush  might  justly  denominate 
'  fash'nable  nollidge  '.  But  the  record  is  barren  in 
direct  biographical  details.  The  chief  of  those 
given  are  the  election  of  the  younger  Harris  as 
Member  for  Christchurch,  where  he  became  his 
father's  colleague  ;  and  his  transfer  from  Madrid 
in  February  1772  as  Envoy  Extraordinary  and 
Minister  Plenipotentiary  to  the  Court  of  Berlin. 
In  1774  Mr.  Harris,  senior,  was  appointed  Comp- 
troller and  Secretary  to  Queen  Charlotte.  It  was 
a  place,  says  his  wife,  more  of  honour  than  of 
profit.  Nevertheless,  it  was  an  appointment  he 
greatly  valued.  It  was  conferred  on  him  with  much 
flourish  of  compliment,  and  he  retained  it  until 
the  end  of  his  life.  Walpole  refers  to  it  as  follows  : 
'  Old  Hermes  of  Salisbury,  father  of  Harris  at 
Berlin,  is  made  Her  Majesty's  Secretary  a  la 
Guildford  ' 2 — words  which  imply  some  obscure 
reservation.  Another  occurrence  belonging  to  this 
period  is  the  publication  of  Harris's  third  work, 
Philosophical  Arrangements,  to  which  reference  has 
already  been  made.  As  this  performance  comes 

1  Winterslow  House  was  burned  down  in  1774  after  one 
of  these  pe;  formances. 

2  Toynbea's  Walpole' s  Letters,  1904,  viii.  406,  409. 


'  HERMES  '  HARRIS  65 

distinctly  within  the  category  of  those  achievements 
which  its  author  himself  describes  as  '  abstruse  ', 
and  which  Byron  would  assuredly  have  classified 
as  '  craggy  V  it  will  be  sufficient  to  copy  here 
Lord  Malmesbury's  brief  account  of  it  :  '  It  contains 
...  a  part  only  of  a  larger  work  that  he  [the  author] 
had  meditated,  but  did  not  finish,  upon  the  Peri- 
patetic Logic.  So  far  as  relates  to  the  Arrangement 
of  Ideas,  it  is  complete  ;  but  it  has  other  objects 
also  in  view.  It  combats  with  great  force  and  ability 
the  atheistical  doctrines  of  Chance  and  Materialism — 
doctrines  which  have  been  lately  [1801]  revived  in 
France,  under  the  specious  garb  of  modern  philo- 
sophy, and  issuing  from  thence  have  overspread 
a  great  part  of  Europe  ;  destroying  the  happiness 
of  mankind  by  subverting,  in  every  part  of  their 
progress,  the  foundations  of  morality  and  religion.' 
This  w/2ra-Aristotelian  work  appeared  in  1775, 
when  Harris  had  passed  his  grand  climacteric. 
During  the  last  few  years  of  his  life  he  was  engaged 
on  a  fourth  book  which,  although  printed  under 
his  superintendence,  was  not  published  until  after 
his  death.  It  is,  no  less,  the  most  attractive  of  his 
productions  both  in  style  and  subject ;  and  it  is 
possible  to  study  it  without  being  endowed  with 
any  inordinate  appetite  for  the  profound.  It  is  in 
fact  a  retrospective  notebook  of  his  previous  philo- 
logical studies,  aiming  at  conclusions  rather  than 
arguments,  and  illustrations  rather  than  demonstra- 
tions. It  was  also,  like  Tom  Jones,  in  some  sort 
designed  as  a  monument  of  the  author's  affection 
towards  many  of  his  intimate  friends.  Lowth's 
'  admirable  tract  '  on  the  grammar  of  the  English 
language  is  naturally  commended  ;  there  is  a  care- 
fully-phrased eulogium  of  Garrick's  acting  ;  Lillo's 
1  Oddly  enough  Harris  himself  uses  this  very  word. 
F 


66  LATER  ESSAYS 

Fatal  Curiosity  is  approvingly  analysed  ;  Fielding's 
parti-coloured  experiences  of  life  are  turned  to 
the  advantage  of  his  masterpieces  ;  *  while  Lyttel- 
ton's  history  and  Mrs.  Montagu's  criticism  have 
each  their  word  of  recognition.  Both  the  Wartons 
are  duly  honoured,  as  are  Tyrwhitt  and  Upton,  nor 
are  Reynolds  and  '  Athenian '  Stuart  forgotten, 
and  there  are  quotations  from  the  Scribleriad  of 
Richard  Owen  Cambridge.  But  in  addition  to  all 
this,  the  book  is  a  fertile  browsing-ground  for  the 
philologist  at  grass.  Even  Johnson  (who  was  not 
kind  to  the  author)  must  have  been  gratified  to 
find  his  Dictionary  adequately  appraised  by  a  com- 
petent judge ;  and  we  know  from  Tom  Tyers 
that,  while  the  great  man  owned  he  '  had  hardly 
ever  read  a  book  through ',  *  the  posthumous 
volumes  of  Mr.  Harris  of  Salisbury  (which  treated 
of  subjects  which  were  connected  writh  his  own 
professional  studies)  had  attractions  which  engaged 
him  to  the  end  '.  The  '  posthumous  volumes '  were 
the  Philological  Inquiries  of  1781.2 

Notwithstanding  all  this,  the  recorded  particulars 
of  Harris's  intercourse  with  the  above  notabilities 
are  neither  very  definite  nor  very  plentiful.  Present 
in  many  places,  he  is  always  a  little  in  the  back- 

1  Harris  does  not  mention  Richardson,  though,  from 
letters  printed  by  Mrs.  Barbauld,  they  must  have  been 
known  to  each  other. 

*  It  should  be  noted  that  Johnson,  although  in  some 
contrary  moment  which  '  raised  his  corruption  ',  he  called 
Harris  '  a  prig  '  to  Boswell  and  '  a  coxcomb  '  to  Mrs.  Thrale, 
was  quite  capable  of  taking  his  part  if  needful ;  and  when 
Cradock  said  that  Hermes  was  too  '  heavy ',  he  replied  '  it 
was  ;  but  a  work  of  that  kind  must  be  heavy  '.  And  then 
Cradock  told  him  the  ridiculous  story  of  the  dull  man  who 
mistook  Hermes  for  an  imitation  of  Tristram  Shandy.  At 
which  Johnson  might  well  be  justified  in  laughing  his 
loudest. 


'  HERMES  '  HARRIS  67 

ground,  a  courteous,  deferential  figure,  never  press- 
ing itself  into  prominence.  We  get  fleeting  glimpses 
of  him  in  the  pages  of  Bosvvell.  In  April  1775  he 
was  at  Cambridge's  pleasant  house  in  the  Twicken- 
ham meadows  when  Johnson  and  Reynolds  came 
to  dine  there  ;  but  little  is  related  of  him  on  this 
occasion,  save  that  he  paid  Johnson  many  com- 
pliments on  his  recently  published  Journey  to  the 
Western  Isles  of  Scotland — compliments  in  which 
Mrs.  Harris,  who  was  with  him,  cannot  have 
participated.  Johnson  failed  to  impress  that 
punctilious  county-lady,  and  she  emphatically  said 
so.  His  conversation,  she  admits,  was  the  same 
as  his  writing  ;  but  his  voice  and  manner  were 
'  dreadful  '.  He  was  amusing,  but  not  benevolent  ; 
'  awkward  beyond  all  expression  '  ;  unpleasant  (she 
uses  cruder  terms)  in  his  dress  and  person,  and 
a  '  ferocious  '  and  '  unthankful  '  feeder.  Boswell 
she  regarded  as  a  '  low-bred  kind  of  being  '.  Three 
years  later  we  meet  Harris  again  at  an  after-dinner 
reception  at  Sir  Joshua's,  chatting  amicably  in 
a  corner  with  Garrick  and  Johnson  (the  latter  in 
the  best  of  post-prandial  humours)  about  Potter's 
Aeschylus  and  translation  and  versification  gener- 
ally; but  Boswell  again  allows  him  to  say  no- 
thing very  memorable  beyond  remarking  that  '  the 
chief  excellence  of  our  language  is  numerous  prose ' — 
a  sentiment  which  should  commend  itself  to 
Mr.  GEORGE  SAINTSBURY.  Hannah  More  assisted 
at  this  gathering  of  greatness,  which  contained, 
she  says,  '  scarce  an  expletive  man  or  woman  among 
them  '.  Harris  must  have  been  also  well  known  to 
Mrs.  Thrale,  for  she  includes  him  in  that  queer 
tabular  character-sketch  of  her  masculine  Streatham 
habitues,  which  she  drew  up  for  her  own  satisfaction. 
In  this  '  computing  of  abilities  ',  she  gives  Harris 
F2 


68  LATER  ESSAYS 

maximum  marks  for  scholarship,  awarding  him  one 
mark  more  than  Johnson.  On  the  other  hand, 
he  gets  but  '  duck's-eggs  '  for  wit  and  humour.1 
Harris's  whole-hearted  admirer,  however,  is  Fanny 
Burney.  '  He  is  a  most  charming  old  man,'  she  says, 
4  and  I  like  him  amazingly.'  '  He  is  at  the  same 
time  learned  and  polite,  intelligent  and  humble.' 
On  his  womenkind  she  is  not  equally  expansive. 
Mrs.  Harris  is  '  nothing  extraordinary  ' — '  a  so-so 
sort  of  woman  ' ;  and  Miss  Louisa  Harris,  though 
admittedly  '  modest,  reserved,  and  sensible  ',  is 
credited  with  a  '  bad  figure  ',  and  is  '  not  hand- 
some '.  It  is  only  polite  to  suppose  that  in  these 
last  respects  Miss  Burney  was  more  than  usually 
short-sighted. 

Little  remains  to  be  said  regarding  Mr.  Harris 
of  Salisbury  beyond  the  facts  that  he  was  painted 
by  Romney  2  and  Highmore,  and  modelled  in  wax 
by  Isaac  Gosset  ;  that  he  was  a  Fellow  of  the 
Society  of  Antiquaries  and  a  Trustee  of  the  British 
Museum.  For  the  concluding  years  of  his  life  his 
chief  occupation  must  have  been  his  Philological 
Inquiries.  His  health,  never  robust,  gradually  de- 
clined. During  the  Gordon  Riots  he  was  safe  at 
Salisbury  ;  but  one  of  his  last  acts  in  London  was 
to  view  the  great  mansion  which  Stuart  had  built 
in  Portman  Square  for  Mrs.  Montagu.  '  I  never 
saw  so  complete  a  sample  of  Grecian  architecture,* 
he  tells  his  son  in  November  1780.  On  December  22 
following,  placid  and  equable  to  the  end,  he  died 
in  the  old  house  in  which,  seventy-one  years  before, 
he  had  been  born.  He  was  buried  in  the  north 
aisle  of  the  Cathedral,  where  lay  many  of  his  ances- 

1  The  reader  may  smile  at  Mrs.  Thrale  in  judgement  on 
the  scholarship  of  two  such  men.  But  she  had  studied  Latin, 
logic,  and  rhetoric  under  Arthur  Collier. 

1  In  the  National  Portrait  Gallery. 


'  HERMES  '  HARRIS  69 

tors,  and  where  there  is  a  monument  to  his  memory. 
His  wife  did  not  long  survive  him.  She  died  at 
Bath  on  October  16,  1781.  His  daughter  Louisa 
lived  on  to  May  1826  ;  and  at  the  date  of  his  death 
his  distinguished  son,  having  married  the  youngest 
daughter  of  Sir  George  Amyand,  had  passed  from 
Berlin  to  St.  Petersburg  as  Ambassador  to  the  Court 
of  Catherine  II,  and  become  a  Knight  of  the  Bath.1 
Sufficient  evidence  of  the  social  and  domestic 
good  qualities  of  the  author  of  Hermes  has  been 
given  in  the  course  of  this  paper.  Of  his  literary 
status  it  is  less  easy  to  speak.  His  chief  ambition — 
an  ambition  he  fully  realized — was  to  earn  the  re- 
putation of  a  Man  of  Learning ;  his  chief  draw- 
back, an  oppressive  display  of  erudition.  He  himself 
admits  the  multiplicity  of  his  quotations.  He  was 
too  earnest  a  student  to  be  a  mere  amateur  ;  too 
matter-of-fact  and  methodical  to  mitigate,  for  the 
benefit  of  the  generality,  what  one  of  his  descendants 
candidly  calls  '  the  dry  philosophy  of  his  works  '. 
Yet  it  is  insisted  by  his  son  that  he  was  in  no  sense 
pedantic  ;  that  he  was  generously  communicative 
of  his  stores  of  information  ;  that,  as  a  critic,  he 
sought  more  for  beauties  than  defects,  and  that 
he  was  rather  indulgent  than  otherwise  in  the  case 
of  honest  efforts  that  failed  of  their  intention.  To 
those  specialists  who  are  concerned  with  the  abstract 
and  formal  discussions  in  which  he  delighted,  his 
labours  must  always  be  of  value.  To  the  rest  he 
might,  in  the  spirit  of  that  motto  from  Pindar  which 
Gray  prefixed  to  his  Odes,  fairly  reply  that  he  only 
professed  to  be  '  vocal  to  the  intelligent  '. 

1  Some  data,  here  and  elsewhere,  arc  derived  from  the 
notes  of  Mr.  T.  H.  Baker  of  Salisbury,  obligingly  communi- 
cated by  his  daughter,  Miss  Frances  Baker. 


THE  JOURNEYS  OF  JOHN 
HOWARD 

IN  a  letter  from  Paris,  dated  May  11,  1775,  and 
printed  in  the  Malmesbury  Correspondence,  occurs 
the  following  passage  :  '  I  saw  a  day  or  two  since 
a  Mr.  Howard,  who  with  a  very  patriotic  principle 
is  here  visiting  the  different  jails  of  this  city,  in  order 
to  bring  in  a  Bill  into  the  House  of  Commons  for  the 
better  regulation  of  English  jails.  .  .  .  After  he  has 
done  with  France  he  purposes  visiting  Holland,  and 
I  make  no  doubt  but  that  England  will  reap  the 
benefit  of  his  extraordinary  tour,  as  he  seems  a  man 
of  strong  sense  and  observation,  and  great  perse- 
verance.' *  There  is  no  further  reference  to  Howard 
in  this  series  of  letters  ;  but  on  the  left  side  of  the 
choir  in  St.  Paul's  is  his  later  effigy  by  John  Bacon, 
R.A.  Although  it  enjoys  the  distinction  of  being 
the  first  statue  admitted  to  the  Cathedral,  it  affords 
but  little  idea  what  manner  of  man  Howard  was  in 
the  flesh,  since,  after  the  misguided  fashion  of  the 
time,  he  masquerades  in  a  classic  costume,  with 
shock  hair,  broken  shackles  at  his  feet,  and  a  key  in 
his  right  hand.  It  is  no  doubt  owing  to  this  last 
emblem  that,  by  those  whom  Addison  would  classify 
as  '  country  gentlemen  ',  he  has  sometimes,  at  first, 
been  mistaken  for  St.  Peter.2  For  more  precise 

1  Letters  of  the  First  Earl  of  Malmesbury,  &c.,  1870,  i.  304. 
The  writer  was  the  Rev.  Dr.  Jeans,  Chaplain  to  the  British 
Embassy  at  Paris. 

*  Its  pendant  is  a  statue  of  Johnson  in  the  same  taste,  by 
the  same  sculptor,  and  has  been  happily  described  as 
resembling  *  a  retired  gladiator  meditating  upon  a  wasted 
life'. 


THE  JOURNEYS  OF  JOHN  HOWARD     71 

information  as  to  his  actual  appearance,  you  must 
go  to  Mather  Brown's  picture  in  the  National 
Portrait  Gallery,  which  represents  him  as  a  plainly 
clad,  hard-featured  personage,  with  cannon  curls, 
compressed  lips,  an  aquiline  nose,  and  a  '  dour  ' 
expression  which  is  accentuated  in  the  print  by 
Edmund  Scott.1  From  this  unpromising  material 
must  be  constructed  the  bodily  presentment  of  one 
of  the  most  steadfast,  strenuous,  and  untiring  of 
English  philanthropists. 

John  Howard's  life-story,  compared  with  his  life- 
work,  here  the  chief  theme,  bulks  so  small  that  his 
early  days  may  be  briefly  dismissed.  Though  date 
and  locality  are  not  free  from  doubt,  it  is  generally 
believed  that  he  was  born  at  Hackney  in  September 
1726.  His  father  was  an  upholsterer  in  that  em- 
porium of  old  clothes,  Long  Lane,  Smithfield.  His 
mother  died  early,  and  after  seven  years  at  a  Hert- 
ford school  in  which,  by  his  own  account,  he  was 
very  imperfectly  instructed,  he  had  some  further 
tuition  at  Newington  Green  under  John  Eames, 
F.R.S.,  from  whom  he  perhaps  derived  a  bias  to 
scientific  pursuits.  He  was  then  apprenticed  to 
a  wholesale  grocer  in  Watling  Street,  a  privilege  for 
which  his  father  paid  £700.  The  elder  Howard, 
dying  shortly  after,  was  opulent  enough  to  leave  his 
son  and  daughter  comfortably  off,  a  circumstance 
which  enabled  the  former,  on  coming  of  age,  to  buy 
himself  out  of  his  indentures,  and  recruit  his  health 
by^starting  on  a  Continental  tour.  When  he  returned, 
he  settled  at  Stoke  Newington,  where  he  had  a  long 
spell  of  nervous  fever,  through  which  he  was 
assiduously  nursed  by  his  landlady,  a  widow  named 
Loidore  or  Lardeau,  herself  an  invalid.  In  spite  of 

1  Charles  Lamb,  who  did  not  like  Howard,  calls  it  '  sour- 
ness '.  But '  dourness  '  is  the  juster  word. 


72  LATER  ESSAYS 

the  fact  that  she  was  more  than  double  his  age, 
gratitude,  coupled  with  a  highly-developed  sense  of 
duty,  prompted  him  to  offer  her  marriage.  Being 
a  woman  of  good  sense,  she  seems,  in  all  sincerity, 
to  have  discouraged  his  advances  ;  but  as  he 
persisted,  she  finally  yielded.  For  more  than  two 
years  they  lived  happily.  Then  her  death,  in 
November  1755,  broke  up  her  husband's  relations 
with  Stoke  Newington  and  once  more  turned  him 
restlessly  to  foreign  wanderings.  The  Lisbon  earth- 
quake, and  the  distress  of  the  sufferers  by  that 
catastrophe,  stirred  his  imagination  ;  and,  early  in 
1756,  he  embarked  for  the  Portuguese  capital  in  the 
Hanover  packet.  The  Hanover  packet,  however,  was 
seized  by  a  French  privateer,  and  carried  into  Brest. 
This  cannot  but  be  regarded  as  a  memorable  incident 
in  Howard's  career.  At  Brest,  at  Morlaix,  and  at 
Carhaix  successively,  he  had  practical  acquaintance 
with  the  unspeakable  privations  of  the  hapless 
prisoners  of  war,  of  whom  to-day  we  hear  so  much  ; 
and,  although  his  obvious  integrity  appears  to  have 
persuaded  his  captors  to  release  him  on  parole,  and 
his  subsequent  exertions  at  home  eventually  procured 
the  liberation  of  his  companions  in  misfortune,  it  is 
not  unreasonable  to  conclude  that  the  events  of  this 
time  insensibly  sowed  the  seed  of  that  obstinate 
crusade  which,  when  the  fitting  opportunity  arrived, 
became  the  ruling  purpose  of  his  life. 

In  1756,  however,  this  psychologically  appropriate 
moment  had  not  been  reached.  He  returned  to  his 
old  occupations  ;  and  there  is  nothing  to  chronicle 
but  the  fact  that,  on  some  slender  scientific  preten- 
sions, he  was  elected  a  member  of  the  Royal  Society. 
He  took  up  his  abode  at  Cardington,  a  village  about 
two  miles  south-east  of  Bedford,  where  much  of  his 
childhood  had  been  spent ;  and  busied  himself  with 


THE  JOURNEYS  OF  JOHN  HOWARD     73 

the  cultivation  of  a  small  property  there  which  he 
had  inherited  from  his  father.  In  April  1758  he 
married  again,  his  second  wife  being  a  Miss  Henrietta 
Leeds,  the  daughter  of  a  gentleman  of  Cambridge. 
It  is  recorded  that  his  somewhat  doctrinaire  habit 
of  mind  led  him  to  stipulate  that  in  matters  of 
domestic  differences  (if  any)  he  should  have  the 
final  word — a  preliminary  to  which  the  lady  un- 
accountably assented.  Their  union  was  happy, 
but  brief.  Although  Mrs.  Howard  (like  her  prede- 
cessor) was  a  churchwoman,  and  her  husband  a 
dissenter,  they  got  on  excellently  ;  and  she  fully 
sympathized  in  all  his  projects  and  improvements. 
Her  health,  however,  failed,  and  after  ineffectually 
moving  to  Lymington  for  change,  she  died  suddenly 
at  Cardington  on  March  31 3  1765,  having  previously 
given  birth  to  a  son.1 

For  the  next  seven  or  eight  years  Howard's  life  was 
comparatively  barren  of  incident.  It  was  chiefly 
spent  at  Cardington,  where  he  continued  to  improve 
his  patrimony,  educating  his  tenants  in  thrift  and 
sanitation,  and  gradually  transforming  what  had 
been  an  unhealthy  district  into  a  model  village.  The 
Lord  of  the  Manor,  Mr.  Samuel  Whitbread,  was 
a  connexion  of  Mrs.  Howard  ;  and  both  he  and 
his  wife,  a  daughter  of  Lord  Cornwallis,  became 
Howard's  devoted  friends,  co-operating  heartily  in  all 
beneficent  schemes  for  the  amelioration  of  the  neigh- 
bourhood. Howard's  health,  never  good,  involved 

1  Howard's  son,  also  John  Howard,  plays  but  a  fitful  part 
in  the  biography  of  his  much-occupied  father,  who,  in  spite 
of  some  now  wholly-discredited  tradition,  was  deeply 
attached  to  him.  He  was  carefully  educated  ;  but  about 
1785  he  became  incurably  insane.  He  survived  his  father 
nine  years.  (The  subject  is  fully  examined  in  chap,  iii  of  the 
valuable  life  of  Howard  contributed  by  Bishop  Gibson  to 
Methuen's  '  Oxford  Biographies'.) 


71  LATER  ESSAYS 

frequent  visits  to  Bath,  the  Bristol  Hot  Wells,  and 
other  watering  places.  These  excursions  he  varied 
by  swallow  flights  to  the  Continent.  In  1770  we 
hear  of  him  at  Geneva  ;  at  Paris  (which  he  found  as 
dirty  as  Evelyn  did),  and  in  clean  Holland,  his 
'  favourite  country '.  At  Rome  he  saw  Pope 
Clement  XIV,  which  '  worthy  good  man  '  dispensed 
him  from  the  un-British  homage  of  kneeling  ;  and 
he  had  again,  after  twenty  years,  a  '  full  strong 
view  '  of  the  Young  Pretender — the  once  '  bonnie 
Prince  Charlie  ' — now  grown  to  look  '  a  mere  sot — 
very  stupid,  dull,  and  bending  double  '.  He  also 
climbed  Vesuvius,  and  took  the  temperature  of  the 
crater,  which  he  afterwards  made  the  subject  of 
a  paper  for  the  Royal  Society.  Towards  1772  he 
was  much  interested  in  a  new  meeting-house  at 
Bedford.  But  it  was  not  until  1773,  when  he  was  in 
his  forty-seventh  year,  that  a  definite  purpose  was 
given  to  his  life  by  his  appointment  as  High  Sheriff 
of  the  County  of  Bedford. 

At  this  date  prison  life  in  England  had  reached  its 
lowest  stage.  A  prison  is  not  supposed  a  paradise- 
still  less  '  an  hermitage  '  ;  but  the  eighteenth- 
century  place  of  confinement  must  have  been  in 
reality  what  Bunyan,  a  century  before,  had  styled 
his  jail  upon  the  Otise,  a  '  Den  '• — and  that  of  the 
worst  description.  In  it,  young  and  old,  hale  and 
sick,  pure  and  impure,  innocent  and  guilty,  were 
herded  and  huddled,  without  distinction  or  occupa- 
tion ;  and  here,  for  the  most  trivial  offences,  on  the 
vaguest  evidence,  they  were  detained  indefinitely,  in 
order  to  satisfy  the  exorbitant  claims  for  fees  made 
by  rapacious  wardens  and  turnkeys.  They  were 
exposed  to  the  most  wanton  cruelty,  systematically 
starved,  savagely  punished,  and  ruthlessly  exposed 
to  the  dangers  of  infection.  Not  a  few  of  them 


THE  JOURNEYS  OF  JOHN  HOWARD     75 

became  imbecile  or  insane,  while  others  succumbed 
to  the  terrible  distemper  generated  by  the  total 
neglect  of  sanitary  precautions.  Some  well-meaning 
attempts  at  bettering  this  deplorable  state  of  things 
had  indeed  been  made.  In  1702  the  Society  for 
Promoting  Christian  Knowledge  had  drawn  up  a 
tentative  '  Essay  towards  ye  Reformation  of  New- 
gate and  ye  other  Prisons  in  and  about  London ' ; 
and  in  1728-9,  Oglethorpe's  Parliamentary  Com- 
mittee l  had  exposed  the  indescribable  barbarities 
of  the  Fleet-warden,  Bambridge,  without  much 
more  visible  result  than  an  addition  to  Thomson's 
Winter,  in  which  the  Commissioners  were  apostro- 
phized as  the  '  generous  few '  who  '  redressive 
sought ' 

Into  the  Horrors  of  the  gloomy  Jail, 
Unpitied,  and  unheard,  where  Misery  moans  ; 
Where  Sickness  pines  ;   where  Thirst  and  Hunger 

burn, 
And  poor  Misfortune  feels  the  Lash  of  Vice,2 

and  so  forth,  in  the  poet's  highly  '  personified  '  blank 
verse.  Hogarth  had  graphically  pilloried  prison-life 
in  his  two  Progresses  ;  Fielding's  irony  had  bitten  it 
deeply  into  the  opening  chapters  of  Amelia ;  and 
Goldsmith,  in  his  Vicar,  anticipating  the  Delitti 
e  Pene  of  Beccaria,  had  incidentally  touched  on 
possibilities  of  reform.  What  was  more,  in  February 
1773,  Mr.  Popham,  M.P.  for  Taunton,  had  so  far 
materialized  the  question  as  to  introduce  a  categorical 
*  Bill  for  the  relief  of  prisoners  ...  in  the  respect  of 
payment  of  fees  ' ;  but  after  a  second  reading  it  was 
dropped  for  that  year.  Thus  the  Golden  Age  of 

1  Hogarth's  picture  of  a  sitting  of  this  Commission  now 
hangs  in  the  National  Portrait  Gallery,  to  which    it   was 
presented  by  Lord  Carlisle  in  1892. 

2  Thomson's  Works,  1738,  i.  219. 


76  LATER  ESSAYS 

the  Jailer  continued  to  flourish  ;  and  it  was  at  this 
juncture  that  Howard  interposed. 

Apart  from  the  Brest  episode  of  seventeen  years 
earlier,  he  had  hitherto  had  no  particular  experi- 
ence of  the  question  which  now  gradually  became 
his  abiding  ambition — namely,  the  inspection  and 
amelioration  of  prison-life  all  over  the  world.  But 
he  was  not  the  man  to  be  in  any  case  what  Lord 
Beaconsfield  called  a  '  decorative  inutility  '  ;  and 
his  first  assize  as  a  Sheriff  opened  his  eyes  widely 
to  conditions  of  which  he  had  previously  had  no 
conception.  He  found,  for  example,  that  persons 
duly  acquitted  on  trial  were  still  detained  in  confine- 
ment for  fees  due  to  the  prison  authorities  ;  and  that 
these  fees  often  exceeded  the  amounts  for  which 
they  had  been  originally  locked  up.  Further,  that 
needful  articles  of  clothing  were  often  impounded  in 
default  of  payment.  To  remedy  these  hardships,  he 
applied  in  his  official  capacity  to  the  justices  of  the 
county  for  a  salary  to  the  jailer  in  place  of  the 
obnoxious  exactions.  '  The  bench  [his  own  words 
are  here  quoted]  were  properly  affected  with  the 
grievance,  and  willing  to  grant  the  relief  desired; 
but  they  wanted  a  precedent  for  charging  the 
county  with  the  expense.  I  therefore  rode  into 
several  neighbouring  counties  in  search  of  a  prece- 
dent ;  but  I  soon  learned  that  the  same  injustice  was 
practised  in  them  ;  and  looking  into  the  prisons, 
I  beheld  scenes  of  calamity  which  I  grew  daily  more 
and  more  anxious  to  alleviate.  In  order  therefore 
to  gain  a  more  perfect  knowledge  of  the  particulars 
and  extent  of  it,  by  various  and  accurate  observation, 
I  visited  most  of  the  County-Gaols  in  England.'  l 

These   plain   and  unpretentious  words  usher  in 

1  The  State  of  the  Prisons  in  England  and  Wales,  &c., 
1777,  p.  2. 


THE  JOURNEYS  OF  JOHN  HOWARD      77 

a  record  of  activities  which,  in  reality,  was  only 
closed  by  the  writer's  death.  The  ground  he 
covered  in  the  visits  so  briefly  described  was  excep- 
tional, and  the  rapidity  of  his  movements,  at  that 
date,  almost  incredible.  On  the  Continental  excur- 
sions, with  which  from  time  to  time  he  varied  his 
English  tours,  he  generally  slept  in  the  German 
travelling  carriage  he  had  bought ;  but  in  England 
the  common  post-chaise  of  the  period,  from  its  fre- 
quent haltings  at  prison  doors,  became  so  noisome 
that  he  was  at  last  obliged  to  take  exclusively  to  the 
saddle.  How  he  escaped  infection  from  the  almost 
universal  small-pox  and  jail-fever,  to  say  nothing  of 
the  historical  perils  of  the  eighteenth-century  high- 
way, is  nothing  short  of  miraculous.  Often  he  pene- 
trated into  places  where  even  the  keepers  shrank 
from  following  in  his  steps.  The  pestilential  atmo- 
sphere affected  his  wearing-apparel,  involving  con- 
stant changes  ;  his  very  notebook  grew  foul  and 
tainted,  and  his  solitary  disinfectant — a  phial  of 
vinegar — inoperative  and  offensive.  Nothing  but 
his  scrupulous  cleanliness  and  the  Spartan  simplicity 
of  his  dietary,  generally  confined  to  bread  and  milk, 
can  have  protected  him.  But  in  order  to  avoid 
discontent  and  dispute,  it  was  his  custom,  at  all 
houses  of  call,  to  pay  for  food  which  he  himself  did 
not  eat  ;  while  his  confidential  attendant,  Thomas- 
son,  and  his  endless  postilions,  &c.,  were  always 
permitted  to  take  their  ease  in  their  inn,  whatever 
happened  to  their  ascetic  and  inflexible  employer. 

Those  who  are  curious  as  to  what  he  saw,  and  the 
farther  he  went  the  more  he  discovered,  must  consult 
his  own  faithful  and  unshrinking  records.  But  a  few 
instances  may  be  given  here.  At  Nottingham  he 
found  that  the  poorer  prisoners  slept  in  damp  '  dug- 
outs '  forty-seven  steps  down,  cut  in  the  sandy  rock  ; 


78  LATER  ESSAYS 

at  Wolverhampton  the  premises  were  so  ruinous  that, 
in  order  to  prevent  the  escape  of  those  confined,  they 
had  to  be  kept  in  irons  ;  at  Gloucester  for  men  and 
women  there  was  but  '  one  small  day  room  ',  twelve 
feet  by  eleven.  At  Ely,  as  insecure  as  Wolver- 
hampton, it  had  been  the  practice  to  chain  the 
inmates  to  the  floor  on  their  backs,  with  a  spiked 
iron  collar  about  their  necks,  and  a  heavy  bar  over 
their  legs.  At  Exeter  county  jail,  it  is  recorded, 
there  was  '  no  chimney,  no  courtyard,  no  water,  no 
sewer  '.  But  if  at  Exeter  this  last  convenience  was 
wanting,  in  another  case  it  ran  uncovered  through 
the  damp,  earth-floored  den.  This  was  at  Knares- 
borough  in  Yorkshire,  where  Howard  heard  a  loathly 
story  of  an  officer,  who,  shut  up  for  a  few  days  as 
a  town  debtor,  took  a  dog  with  him  to  defend  him 
from  vermin.  '  The  dog  was  soon  destroyed,  and 
the  Prisoner's  face  much  disfigured  by  them.'  l  At 
Plymouth  there  were  two  small  chambers  for  felons. 
One  of  these — the  '  Clink  ' — was  solely  lighted  and 
ventilated  by  a  wicket  in  the  door,  seven  inches  by 
five,  and  to  this  contracted  breathing-hole  three 
prisoners  under  sentence  of  transportation  '  came 
by  turns  for  air '.  At  Gosport,  Newport,  Portsmouth, 
and  Southampton  the  jails  were  equally  horrible  and 
evil-smelling,  while  at  Horsham  Bridewell  the 
wretched  captives  had  but  one  room,  with  the  result 
that  the  keeper  himself  had  died  of  the  distemper. 
Other  houses  of  correction  revealed  similar  enormities. 
There  were  stories  of  prisoners  who  were,  or  had 
become,  insane  ;  of  hopeless  lunatics  hidden  for 
years  in  subterranean  cells.  And  overcrowding,  bad 
air,  starvation,  and  cruelty  were  not  the  only  or  the 
worst  defects  of  the  prevailing  system,  which,  where 
money  was  obtainable  and  the  keepers  '  in  a  con- 
1  The  State  of  the  Prisons,  &c.,  1777,  p.  410. 


THE  JOURNEYS  OF  JOHN  HOWARD     79 

catenation  accordingly  ',  favoured  and  fostered  all 
kinds  of  intemperance,  immorality,  gambling,  and 
profanity.  But  for  the  present  purpose  it  is  time  to 
cry  '  Enough  '. 

To  these  horrors,  however,  during  the  period  of 
their  first  collection,  Howard  had  two  important 
intermissions.  One  arose  out  of  the  reintroduction 
of  Mr.  Popham's  Bill  of  1773  ;  and,  on  this  occa- 
sion, Howard,  fresh  from  his  interrupted  inquiries, 
was  examined  by  a  Parliamentary  Committee.  His 
unique  personality  and  his  evidence  made  a  remark- 
able impression  on  those  who  heard  him  ;  and  he  was 
eventually  summoned  to  the  Bar  of  the  House  of 
Commons  to  receive  their  thanks  for  his  valuable 
communications,  an  honour  of  which  he  afterwards 
showed  his  sense  in  the  Dedication  of  his  first  book. 
Popham's  Bill,  it  may  be  added,  with  another,  be- 
came law  ;  but  unhappily  failed  of  its  object ;  and 
it  was  actually  left  to  Howard  to  circulate  copies  of 
the  new  Acts  at  his  own  cost  to  the  different  jails  in 
the  United  Kingdom,  where  they  were  either  evaded 
or  disregarded.  The  other  brief  distraction  from 
his  philanthropic  journeyings  was  his  standing  as 
a  candidate  for  the  borough  of  Bedford.  This  may 
be  regarded  as  a  thing  to  which  he  was  prompted 
rather  than  predestined.  He  had  no  parliamentary 
ambition,  and  the  political  methods  of  the  day  would 
in  all  probability  have  only  hindered  his  contem- 
plated reforms.  Consequently  it  is  fortunate  that 
he  failed  ;  and  that  the  next  best  thing  happened 
to  him  in  the  return  of  his  connexion  and  colleague, 
Mr.  Whitbread. 

For  a  year  or  two  more  Howard  pursued  his 
investigations.  Besides  visiting  most  of  the  jails  and 
bridewells  in  Great  Britain  and  Ireland  he  visited 
France,  as  mentioned  in  the  opening  lines  of  this 


80  LATER  ESSAYS 

paper,  the  Austrian  Netherlands,  Holland,  Germany, 
and  Switzerland.  He  was  not  successful — or  perhaps 
thought  it  wisest  not  to  succeed — in  obtaining 
admission  to  the  Bastille.  In  some  cases,  however, 
he  found  the  foreign  prisons  easier  of  access  than 
those  of  his  own  country,  as  the  law  permitted 
charitable  persons  to  visit  those  confined.  On  the 
whole,  things  were  far  more  satisfactory  abroad  than 
at  home.  There  was,  in  the  first  place,  no  jail-fever, 
which,  in  apathetic  England,  had  almost  come  to  be 
regarded  as  a  necessary  evil  ;  there  was  less  drunken- 
ness, and  though  there  was  dirt  and  terrible  torture, 
he  had  seen  things  as  bad  already.  By  the  close  of 
1776  he  had  practically  completed  the  collection  of 
his  material,  and  begun  to  think  of  print.  Matter-of- 
fact  and  careful,  he  was  without  literary  experience  ; 
but  after  receiving  some  assistance  in  arranging  and 
co-ordinating  his  facts,  he  carried  his  manuscripts 
to  Warrington  in  Lancashire,  where  there  was  a  press 
at  which  he  had  decided  to  have  his  book  set  up,  and 
where,  moreover,  resided  his  friend  Dr.  John  Aikin 
(Mrs.  Barbauld's  brother),  from  whom  he  looked  to 
receive  much  valuable  advice. 

His  life  at  Warrington  was  as  characteristically 
methodical  as  any  part  of  his  career.  He  took 
lodgings  near  the  printers,  and  devoted  himself 
exclusively  to  the  production  of  the  book.  Rising 
at  two,  he  corrected  proofs  until  seven.  He  then 
breakfasted.  At  eight  he  went  to  the  office,  where 
he  remained  until  one,  the  dinner-hour  of  the  work- 
men. He  then  went  back  to  his  lodgings  for  a  frugal 
meal  of  bread  and  raisins  or  other  dried  fruit, 
generally  eaten  during  some  pedestrian  expedition 
in  the  outskirts  of  the  little  Lancashire  town,  and 
afterwards  washed  down  with  a  glass  of  water.  Once 
more  visiting  the  printing  office,  he  remained  there 


THE  JOURNEYS  OF  JOHN  HOWARD     81 

until  it  closed,  when  he  repaired  to  Dr.  Aikin's  to  go 
with  him  through  any  sheets  which  might  have  been 
composed  during  the  day.  If  this  were  not  requisite, 
he  spent  an  hour  with  some  other  friend,  or  returned 
quietly  to  his  simple  supper  and  early  rest,  ending 
always,  as  it  had  been  his  practice  to  do  throughout 
his  journeys,  with  family  prayers,  often  with  no 
other  audience  than  his  already-mentioned  servant 
Thomasson.1 

In  this  way  the  time  passed  until  April  1777,  when, 
under  the  title  of  The  State  of  the  Prisons  in  England 
and  Wales,  with  Preliminary  Observations,  and  an 
Account  of  Some  Foreign  Prisons,  the  book,  in  its 
first  form,  was  published  from  Warrington  as  a 
quarto  volume.  Pecuniary  profit  being  in  no  wise 
Howard's  aim,  there  was  no  subscription  list  ;  and 
he  fixed  the  price  so  low  that,  in  Dr.  Aikin's  opinion, 
*  had  every  copy  been  sold,  he  would  still  have 
presented  the  public  with  all  the  plates,  and  great 
part  of  the  printing,'  2  while  he  distributed  the  book 
freely  to  '  most  of  the  considerable  persons  in  the 
kingdom,  and  to  all  his  own  particular  friends.'  3  By 
the  public  it  was  naturally  received  with  the  welcome 
which  his  disinterested  labours  and  decision  of 
character  had  already  bespoken.  He  rightly  regarded 
his  efforts  as  means  to  an  end  for  which  he  could  only 
pave  the  way.  It  has  been  said  that  he  was  a  prac- 
tical rather  than  a  philosophic  reformer  ;  but  he 
knew  his  limitations  ;  and  he  was  content  with  the 
subordinate  position  of  pioneer.  Indeed,  with  the 
self-suppressing  caution  of  those  qui  ont  horreur  de 
se  surfaire,  he  habitually  described  himself  as  '  the 
plodder,  who  goes  about  to  collect  materials  for  men 

»  Brown's  Memoirs,  &c.,  2nd  ed.,  1823,  pp.  208-9. 
2  Aikin,  as  quoted  by  Brown,  p.  210. 
»  Brown,  p.  220. 

G 


82  LATER  ESSAYS 

of  genius  to  make  use  of ', 1  and  those  who  catch 
sagaciously  at  the  admissions  of  modesty  will  doubt- 
less welcome  the  superficial  aptness  of  a  characteriza- 
tion which  really  goes  no  further  than  is  justified  by 
the  initial  stages  of  a  large  ambition.  What  he  was 
doing,  was  to  lay  the  ground  solidly  for  the  labourers 
of  the  future  ;  and  he  had  common  sense  enough  to 
foresee  that,  as  in  most  diseases,  what  had  long 
existed  would  probably  take  long  to  cure. 

The  dedication  to  the  House  of  Commons  had  been 
dated  from  Cardington,  and  for  a  short  time  he 
seems  to  have  rested  from  his  labours  in  his  Bedford- 
shire home.  In  August,  by  the  death  of  his  sister, 
Miss  Howard,  he  came  into  £15,000  and  a  house  in 
Great  Ormond  Street  (No.  23).  This  was  a  welcome 
addition  to  his  means,  already  severely  taxed,  and 
even  strained,  by  his  heavy  expenditure  in  type  and 
travel  ;  and  it  appears  that  eventually  he  expended 
the  whole  of  the  money  on  his  philanthropic  projects, 
present  and  future.  Even  the  Great  Ormond  Street 
house  was  sold,  though,  if  we  may  judge  from  a  letter 
addressed  to  him  by  Hayley  in  1780,  he  was  still 
resident  there  at  that  date.  But  his  Cardington 
retirement  soon  came  to  a  close.  One  of  the  results 
of  the  rupture  with  the  American  Colonies  had  been 
the  substitution'of  the  Thames  hulks  for  transporta- 
tion ;  and  the  unsatisfactory  state  of  these  '  earthly 
hells  '  had  early  arrested  his  attention.  He  had, 
indeed,  been  aware  of  it  before  The  State  of  the 
Prisons  appeared  ;  but  he  had  magnanimously 
refrained  from  animadverting  on  a  condition  of 
things  which  was  obviously  only  in  the  making.  In 
April  1778,  however,  he  was  called  upon  to  give 
evidence  before  a  Committee  of  the  House  of 
Commons  on  the  subject,  and  he  unflinchingly 
1  Aikin,  as  quoted  by  Brown,  p.  607. 


THE  JOURNEYS  OF  JOHN  HOWARD     8S 

exposed  what  he  regarded  as  the  defects  of  the 
system,  with  the  result  that,  though  the  idea  was 
not  abandoned,  several  salutary  and  material  altera- 
tions were  decided  upon,  with  the  carrying  out  of 
which  Howard  and  two  colleagues  were  entrusted. 
This,  however,  belongs  to  a  later  date.  Two  days 
after  his  appearance  before  the  Committee,  Howard 
started  on  another  foreign  tour  which  occupied  the 
remainder  of  the  year.  At  Amsterdam  he  was  so 
unfortunate  as  to  be  knocked  down  by  a  runaway 
horse,  and  thrown  on  a  heap  of  stones.  This  brought 
on  an  inflammatory  fever,  which  laid  him  up  at 
The  Hague  for  more  than  six  weeks.  As  soon  as 
he  recovered,  he  began  a  minute  inspection  of  the 
famous  Rasp-  and  Spin-Houses  at  Amsterdam  and 
other  kindred  institutions  in  Holland.  The  Rasphuis 
— it  should  perhaps  be  mentioned — was  a  peniten- 
tiary for  prisoners  not  convicted  of  capital  crimes, 
who  were  generally  employed  in  what  Evelyn  calls 
the  '  very  hard  labour  '  of  rasping  Brazil  and  Cam- 
peachy  wood  into  powder  for  dyeing  purposes : 
the  other  was  a  reformatory  for  women  undergoing 
sentence  for  offences  of  greater  or  less  importance.1 
The  judicious  regulation  of  both  these  places  much 
impressed  Howard.  We  next  find  him  in  Berlin  at 
the  crucial  moment  when  Frederick  the  Great  was 
fronting  the  Emperor  Joseph  over  the  succession  to 
the  vacant  Electorate  of  Bavaria,  a  disputed  question 
which  was  bloodlessly  solved  in  the  following  year 
by  the  Treaty  of  Teschen.  From  Germany  he  passed 
to  Austria  and  Italy,  visiting  the  prisons  at  Trieste, 
and  the  terrible  Piombi  or  '  leads  '  of  the  Doge's 

1  There  is  a  graphic  description  of  both  these  establish- 
ments, obviously  derived  from  contemporary  material,  in 
Sala's  Strange  Adventures  of  Captain  Dangerous,  1863, 
iii,  pp.  127-80. 

G  2 


84  LATER  ESSAYS 

Palace  at  Venice,  which  were  said  to  drive  the  hapless 
inmates  mad  with  their  unendurable  heat.1  And 
here  may  come  in  a  couple  of  anecdotes  which 
illustrate  Howard's  uncompromising  disposition. 
When  at  Prague  he  was  admitted  to  a  Capuchin 
monastery.  Although  it  was  a  jour  maigre,  he  found 
that  the  holy  fathers,  in  manifest  defiance  of  the 
regulations,  were  feasting  royally.  This  naturally 
roused  the  righteous  indignation  of  their  vegetarian 
visitor.  He  forthwith  scolded  them  severely  and 
even  threatened  to  report  them  to  the  Pope — a 
threat  which  brought  a  deputation  of  the  terrified 
delinquents  next  day  to  his  hotel  to  implore  him  to 
stay  his  hand.  This  he  would  not  promise  to  do  ; 
but  the  matter  was  practically  composed  by  their 
undertaking  solemnly  not  to  offend  again.2  The 
other  anecdote,  which  belongs  to  a  slightly  later  date, 
may  be  reproduced  here  because  it  exhibits  Howard's 
inflexible  courage  and  determination  where  he  held 
that  his  just  claims  were  involved.  Travelling 
a  certain  narrow  road  in  Prussia,  it  was  the  rule,  for 
the  convenience  of  passengers,  to  sound  a  horn  on 
entering  it.  Howard  had  done  this,  when  he 
encountered^  King's  courier  coming  the  other  way 
who  had  neglected  the  prescribed  precaution. 
Howard  therefore  flatly  refused  to  turn  back  ;  and 
after  sitting  some  time  in  their  respective  con- 
veyances, the  courier  was  forced  to  withdraw,  as 

1  Cf.  Byron's  '  appalling  cells,  the  "  leaden  roofs  ",'  in 
Marino  Faliero,  Act  I,  sc.  u,  and  Rogers's  Italy.  These 
references  have  been  thought  to  be  overcharged  ;  and 
Howard's  own  matter-of-fact  words  (as  quoted  by  Stoughton, 
p.  182)  are  :  '  The  rooms  for  the  State  prisoners  are  over 
part  of  the  palace  in  the  leads,  which  renders  confinement 
in  the  heat  of  summer  almost  intolerable.' 

•  This  anecdote  is  told  on  the  authority  of  Howard's 
servant,  Thomasson. 


THE  JOURNEYS  OF  JOHN  HOWARD     85 

Howard  persisted  in  declining  to  renounce  his  rights. 
It  was  a  perilous  victory  in  an  autocratic  country  ; 
and,  in  these  days,  would  probably  have  ended 
otherwise. 

From  Italy,  where  he  also  visited  Rome,  Florence, 
and  Naples,  he  came  back  again  to  Holland  and 
France.  At  Calais  and  Dunkirk  he  interested  him- 
self in  the  condition  of  the  English  prisoners  of  war 
then  detained  there,  an  inquiry  which  led  to  a  corre- 
sponding investigation  of  the  treatment  of  French 
prisoners  in  England,  in  both  of  which  enterprises  he 
was  fortunate  enough  to  bring  about  a  better  state 
of  things.  When  he  arrived  at  home  early  in  1779, 
he  once  more  occupied  himself  in  prison  visiting, 
travelling  again  to  many  prisons  in  England,  Scot- 
land, and  Ireland.  The  result  of  his  inquiries  was  so 
far  satisfactory  as  to  assure  him  that  his  previous 
labours  had  not  been  wholly  in  vain.  In  many  cases 
modifications  had  been  made  and  abuses  rectified. 
When,  at  the  end  of  the  year,  he  retired  to  Warring- 
ton  to  prepare  the  Appendix  to  his  book  which  was 
published  in  1780,  he  was  able  to  make  thankful 
record  of  these  things.  In  the  matter  of  jail-fever, 
in  particular,  the  report  was  most  encouraging.  Only 
one  person,  indeed,  was  found  to  have  suffered  from 
it,  and  that  was  a  criminal  in  Newgate  under 
sentence  of  death.  These  facts,  together  with  the 
relation  of  his  Continental  experiences,  were  all 
duly  incorporated  in  the  Appendix,  and  they  gave 
great  satisfaction  to  the  author.  Another  matter 
which  occupied  him  constantly  during  1780  was  an 
attempt  to  carry  out  the  duties  imposed  on  him  in 
regard  to  the  creation  of  penitentiaries  under  the 
Hulks  Act  of  two  years  earlier.  But  he  was  too 
earnest  and  independent  to  work  smoothly  with  tem- 
porizing colleagues  ;  and  though  he  was  fortunate 


86  LATER  ESSAYS 

in  having  a  staunch  ally  in  his  friend  Dr.  Fother- 
gill,  he  was  unhappy  in  his  third  coadjutor,  Mr. 
Whatley,  who  seems  to  have  been  incurably  obstruc- 
tive. The  recital  of  these  not  uncommon  difficulties 
would  be  tedious  and  even  hackneyed  ;  but  the 
death  of  Fothergill  finally  supplied  Howard  with 
a  pretext  for  withdrawing  from  an  impracticable 
tasK.  This  step  he  accordingly  took  at  the  beginning 
of  1781.  The  supplementing  of  the  hulks  by  houses 
of  correction  on  the  Dutch  plan,  however,  fared  no 
better  in  fresh  hands  ;  and  finally  came  to  nothing. 
But  Howard's  resignation  opportunely  left  him  free 
to  follow  his  own  devices. 

He  was  not  long  in  coming  to  a  decision.  In  May 
1781  he  started  on  an  extended  tour  in  Northern 
Europe.  Holland,  as  usual,  was  first  visited  ;  then 
Denmark,  Sweden,  and  Russia,  in  which  last 
country  he  witnessed  the  horrible  effects  of  punish- 
ment by  the  knout.  Keeping  strictly  to  the  main 
object  of  his  journey,  and  travelling  at  speed  in 
a  light  carriage  drawn  by  two  horses,  which  he  had 
bought  for  fifty  roubles  (about  ten  guineas),  he  made 
his  way  to  St.  Petersburg,  Moscow,  and  Warsaw, 
covering  many  hundred  miles  of  the  '  worst  country 
in  Europe  '.  At  St.  Petersburg  he  had  a  fit  of  ague  ; 
and  generally,  except  at  Warsaw,  had  the  greatest 
difficulty  in  procuring  the  simple  diet  on  which  he 
depended.  Returning  by  Germany,  he  passed  again 
through  Flanders,  and  visited  the  hospital  at  Bruges. 
The  good  sisters  asked  if  he  were  a  Catholic,  to  which 
he  replied  that  he  loved  good  people  of  all  religions. 
'  We  hope  you  will  die  a  Catholic,'  was  the  fervent 
rejoinder.  The  ensuing  year  was  spent  on  home 
visitations.  At  Dublin  he  was  made  an  LL.D.,  and 
was  gratified  by  increased  Parliamentary  activity  in 
the  direction  of  prison  discipline.  So  passed  1782. 


THE  JOURNEYS  OF  JOHN  HOWARD    87 

In  January  1783  Howard  once  more  turned  his 
abroad,  his  next  objective  (to  use  a  now 
familiar  word)  being  Spain  and  Portugal.  Travelling 
in  Spain  he  thought  feasible  enough,  provided  the 
traveller  could  '  live  sparingly  and  lay  on  the  floor ', 
and  he  found  the  countrymen  of  Don  Quixote  '  very 
sober  and  very  honest  '.  But  both  in  Spain  and 
Portugal  he  failed  to  get  any  intimate  acquaintance 
with  the  penetralia  of  the  Inquisition,  although  at 
Madrid  he  actually  offered  to  submit  to  confinement 
for  a  month  to  satisfy  his  curiosity.  He  was  informed 
that  none  came  out  under  three  years,  and  that  they 
took  the  oath  of  secrecy.  '  I  need  not  say  [he  adds] 
how  horrid  the  secrecy  and  severity  of  it  appear ;  ' 
and  he  noted  that  the  very  sight  of  the  court  (from 
which  there  was  no  appeal)  seemed  to  strike  terror 
into  the  common  people  as  they  passed  it.  At  Lille, 
in  returning,  he  caught  a  fever  when  visiting  the 
prisoners  at  the  Tour  de  St.  Pierre  ;  but  the  end  of 
the  year,  after  some  further  excursions  to  jails  in 
England  and  Ireland,  found  him  at  work  on  a  second 
Appendix  to  his  book,  and  a  third  or  revised  edition 
of  the  whole  work,  with  which  he  incorporated  his 
travels  since  1777,  noting  particularly  the  changes 
which  his  efforts  had  brought  about.  He  was  able 
also  to  cancel  some  former  censure  no  longer  applic- 
able. This  third  edition  appeared  in  1784,  and 
a  memorandum  printed  in  a  note  to  Brown's 
Memoirs1  shows  that  in  the  course  of  his  journeys 
he  had  covered  more  than  42,000  miles. 

By  this  date  his  original  scheme  of  prison  inspec- 
tion was  practically  completed.  But  a  fresh  purpose 
had  begun  to  excite  and  absorb  his  still  unwearied 
energy.  In  the  above-mentioned  edition  he  had 
incidentally  made  reference  to  a  subject  then 
1  Brown's  Memoirs,  &c.,  2nd  cd.,  1823,  p.  651. 


88  LATER  ESSAYS 

exercising  many  minds — namely,  the  terrible  preva- 
lence of  plague  and  the  inadequate  and  rudimentary 
character  of  the  precautions  observed  to  check  the 
spread  of  infection  from  country  to  country.  After 
fruitless  written  attempts  to  obtain  particulars  with 
respect  to  the  different  quarantine  stations  or  laza- 
rettos, he  at  length  determined  to  go  and  get 
them  himself ;  and  in  spite  of  cautions  as  to  the 
difficulty  and  even  danger  of  his  enterprise,  he  set 
out  in  November  1785  for  Marseilles,  as  usual  via 
Holland.  He  had  been  warned  by  Lord  Carmarthen, 
Pitt's  Foreign  Secretary,  that  he  ran  a  risk  of  being 
'  committed  to  the  Bastille  '  ;  but  his  ardour  was 
unquenchable  when  his  mind  was  made  up.  Mys- 
terious happenings  at  Paris,  including  an  unexplained 
midnight  visit  from  an  official  with  a  sword  and  '  an 
enormous  muff  ',  led  him  to  suspect  that  he  was 
under  surveillance  ;  and,  posing  discreetly  as  an 
English  doctor,  he  went  on  by  Lyons  to  Marseilles. 
At  Marseilles  a  Protestant  friend  gravely  counselled 
him  to  quit  France  as  quickly  as  possible  as  he  was 
manifestly  '  wanted  ',  and  had  only,  by  good  fortune, 
escaped  arrest  in  the  French  capital.  Nevertheless 
he  persisted  in  visiting  the  local  lazaretto  ;  and 
thence,  proceeding  to  Toulon,  actually  contrived, 
'  as  a  Frenchman  '  (a  fact  which  supposes  consider- 
able linguistic  capacity  and  some  histrionic  power), 
to  obtain,  on  two  occasions,  admission  to  the  Arsenal, 
and  this  in  the  face  of  a  strict  prohibition  especially 
directed  against  '  perfidious  Albion  '.  His  next  aim 
was  Italy.  But  by  this  time  his  local  well-wishers 
were  seriously  apprehensive  as  to  his  safety,  and  to 
avoid  crossing  the  frontier  he  persuaded  a  Genoese 
coaster  to  carry  him  by  sea  to  his  destination.  This 
was  effected  after  sundry  moving  accidents,  not  the 
least  of  which  was  a  three  days'  marooning  '  in  an 


THE  JOURNEYS  OF  JOHN  HOWARD     89 

almost  desolate  island,  overgrown  with  myrtle, 
rosemary,  and  thyme  '.  These  details  are  derived 
from  a  letter  from  Nice  in  January  1786,  when  its 
writer  was  on  his  way  to  Genoa  and  Leghorn,  which 
latter  place  he  reached  in  the  following  month. 
Here  the  authorities  gave  him  every  facility.  But 
he  was  already  beginning  to  sigh  for  the  pleasant 
house  at  Cardington,  of  which  Dr.  Stoughton  gives 
a  picture  in  his  frontispiece,  where  he  hoped  to  spend 
a  year  or  two  in  quiet  before  he  died.  And  travelling 
must  have  become  more  irksome,  for  we  learn 
incidentally  that  for  the  moment  he  had  now  no 
servant,  and  by  this  time  he  was  sixty. 

From  Leghorn  he  went  on  via  Pisa  to  Florence, 
noting  with  satisfaction  much  improvement  since  his 
former  visit,  and  from  Florence  to  Rome.  Pius  VI 
had  succeeded  to  the  Pontificate  and  was  as  indul- 
gent to  him  as  Clement  XIV.  More  than  that,  he 
gave  him  his  benediction.  '  I  know  you  Englishmen 
do  not  value  these  things,  but  the  blessing  of  an  old 
man  can  do  you  no  harm.'  After  Rome  came 
Naples  ;  and  after  Naples,  Malta,  where  he  stayed 
three  weeks.  Armed  with  credentials  from  Sir 
William  Hamilton,  at  that  time  our  Ambassador  at 
Naples,  he  promptly  waited  on  the  Grand  Master, 
who  received  him  warmly  and  at  once  sent  him 
a  propitiatory  present  of  butter.  But  Howard 
unfortunately  was  not  able  to  answer  in  kind.  Being 
asked  his  opinion  of  the  arrangements  at  the  famous 
hospitals,  he  replied  so  candidly  that,  although  some 
definite  modifications  were  made,  and  his  visits  were 
still  permitted,  he  received  no  more  table  luxuries. 
'  So  my  tea  was  ever  after  with  dry  bread,'  he  writes 
laconically  in  a  letter  from  Zante,  whence  he  pur- 
posed sending  a  barrel  of  currants  to  make  a  Christ- 
mas pudding  for  the  Cardington  poor.  (Zante,  it 


90  LATER  ESSAYS 

may  be  remarked,  must  have  been  a  paradise  of 
cheapness,  for  meat  was  but  2d.  a  pound  !)  After 
making  his  way  from  Zante  to  Smyrna,  he  finally 
resolved  '  to  perform  Quarantine  himself ',  and  to 
this  end  embarked  for  Venice  (where  the  first 
lazaretto  had  been  established)  in  a  ship  '  with  afotd 
bill  '.  The  voyage  as  usual  was  not  uneventful.  The 
ship  was  attacked  by  a  Tunisian  privateer,  and  but 
for  the  fortunate  havoc  wrought  by  a  cannon  charged 
with  spike-nails,  and  said  by  Aikin  to  have  been 
pointed  by  Howard  himself,  they  might  all  have  been 
carried  away  to  Barbary  as  slaves. 

At  Venice  Howard  seems  to  have  undergone  to  the 
full  the  hardships  of  primitive  quarantine.  The  so- 
called  '  new  lazaretto  '  was  horribly  dirty,  full  of 
vermin,  and  wholly  unfurnished.  A  transfer  to  the 
'  old  lazaretto  '  was  no  improvement ;  and  it  was 
only  by  a  third  move,  and  the  help  of  as  much  lime- 
wash  as  he  could  procure,  that  he  was  able  to  restore 
his  health,  already  considerably  affected  by  the  dis- 
comforts of  his  previous  internments.  He  did  not, 
however,  regret  the  step  he  had  taken,  as  it  had 
taught  him  much.  To  use  his  own  words  :  '  The 
regulations  are  admirable,  if  they  were  better  kept.' 
But  matters  were  not  improved  by  the  intelligence 
he  now  received  from  England.  He  learned  to  his 
annoyance  that  funds  were  being  collected  for 
erecting  a  statue  to  him,  a  proposal  inexpressibly 
distasteful  to  a  man  of  his  unpretentious  tempera- 
ment. He  immediately  protested,  and  begged  that 
the  design  might  at  once  be  abandoned,  a  course 
which  was  reluctantly  taken.  The  other  and  more 
serious  news  announced  that  his  son,  after  various 
ominous  irregularities,  had  become  seriously  de- 
ranged.1 

1    See  note  at  p.  73. 


THE  JOURNEYS  OF  JOHN  HOWARD     91 

Hastening  homewards  as  quickly  as  possible, 
Howard  started  from  Venice  by  Trieste  for  Vienna. 
But  his  progress  was  slow.  He  was"much  reduced 
by  fatigue  of  body  and  mind,  and|the  low  fever 
contracted  in  the  unwholesome  lazarettos  still  clung 
about  him.  At  Vienna,  on  Christmas  Day  1786, 
when  he  was  on  the  point  of  quitting  the  Austrian 
capital,  he  was  summoned  to  a  private  interview 
with  the  Emperor  Joseph  II.  The  son  of  Maria 
Theresa  was  himself  a  confirmed,  if  not  always 
judicious,  reformer,  and  he  listened  affably  to 
Howard's  frank  and  fervent  exposure  of  the  short- 
comings of  prevailing  prison  arrangements,  and  the 
necessity  for  the  discipline  of  the  criminal.1  '  The 
Emperor  shaked  me  by  the  hand,  and  said  I  had 
given  him  much  pleasure.'  By  February  1787 
Howard  was  back  in  London,  only  to  find  that  his  son 
had  completely  lost  his  reason  ;  and  that,  for  the 
moment,  there  was  nothing  to  be  done  but  to  keep 
him  under  control,  with  faint  hope  of  his  recovery. 
In  these  circumstances  the  unfortunate  but  inde- 
fatigable father  set  out  afresh  on  a  fifth  tour  of  the 
jails  of  the  United  Kingdom.  At  Dublin  he  met 
John  Wesley,  who  writes  in  his  Diary  for  June  26, 
1787 :  4 1  had  the  pleasure  of  a  conversation  with 
Mr.  Howard,  I  think  one  of  the  greatest  men  in 
Europe.  Nothing  but  the  mighty  power  of  God  can 
enable  him  to  go  through  his  difficult  and  dangerous 
employments.'  2  After  this  Howard  retired  once 
more  to  Warrington  to  superintend  the  production 
of  his  new  work,  An  Account  of  the  Principal  Lazarettos 

J  Howard  is  said  to  have  been  fond  of  a  motto  which  he 
had  seen  at  Odescalchi's  hospital  at  San  Michele  in  Rome  : 
Parum  est  improbos  coercere  poena,  nisi  probos  effidas 
disciplina — an  axiom  which,  he  held,  expressed  '  the  grand 
purpose  of  all  civil  policy  relative  to  criminals '. 

»  Wesley's  Journal,  1901,  iv.  370. 


92  LATER  ESSAYS 

in  Europe.  This  was  published  early  in  1789,  and 
besides  recording  the  results  of  his  Continental 
travels,  included  much  that  was  supplementary  to 
The  State  of  the  Prisons.  With  the  appearance  of  the 
lazaretto  book  Howard's  life-purpose  was  virtually 
achieved.  He  was  advanced  in  years,  and  might 
reasonably  look  forward  to  the  term  of  his  labours. 
But  the  illness  of  his  son,  who  had  been  now  formally 
removed  to  a  private  asylum  at  Leicester,  had 
effectively  broken  up  that  dream  of  the  much- 
enduring,  a  sequestered  old  age  ;  and  many  seem- 
ingly finished  courses  issue  forlornly  in  a  Teucer-like 
*  Cras  ingens  iterabimus  aequor  '.  So  it  fared  with 
John  Howard.  In  July  1789,  after  regulating  his 
affairs  with  minute  care,  which  seemed  like  a  pre- 
vision of  the  end,  he  set  out  on  an  indeterminate 
tour  to  the  East,  bidding  farewell  to  his  friends  with 
a  prophetic  finality.  '  We  shall  soon  meet  in  Heaven, ' 
he  said  to  one  of  them  ;  '  the  way  to  Heaven  from 
Grand  Cairo  is  as  near  as  from  London '.  His  first 
letter  home  was  from  Moscow,  which  he  had  reached 
through  Holland  and  Germany.  Wherever  he 
stopped,  hospitals  and  prisons  were  thrown  open  to 
him.  He  was  then  on  his  road  to  Warsaw,  his 
ultimate  goal  being  Constantinople ;  and  his  general 
purpose,  in  his  own  words,  '  to  investigate  and 
ascertain  with  precision  the  cause  of  the  plague '. 
But  the  war  between  Russia  and  Turkey  changed 
his  plans  by  attracting  his  attention  to  the  military 
and  naval  hospitals  '  towards  the  Black  Sea  ',  and 
he  was  anxious  to  give  a  fair  trial  to  his  favourite 
recipe,  that  Fever  Powder  of  Dr.  James  so  dear  to 
his  contemporaries  from  royalty  downwards,  and 
so  deadly  to  poor  Oliver  Goldsmith.  He  reached 
Kherson  in  Russian  Tartary  in  November,  having 
been  robbed  en  route ;  and  soon  had  ample  oppor- 


THE  JOURNEYS  OF  JOHN  HOWARD     93 

tunity  for  discovering  the  manifold  defects  of  the 
hospitals.  Cleanliness  was  unknown ;  the  wards 
were  offensive  and  the  patients  dirty  ;  diseases  of  all 
kinds  were  prevalent,  and  contagion  entirely  dis- 
regarded. But  in  the  last  entry  of  his  note-book  he 
was  able  to  record  that  his  courageous  and  urgent 
remonstrances  were  not  entirely  in  vain,  and  that, 
in  the  matter  of  sanitation  especially,  much  good 
had  already  resulted. 

A  fortnight  later  he  was  dead.  He  caught  a  fever 
in  visiting  a  young  lady,  to  whose  bedside  he  had 
been  summoned.  Whether  his  ailment  was  the  camp 
fever  from  which  she  was  suffering,  or  whether  he 
had  taken  a  chill  in  going  to  her  assistance,  is  not 
certain  ;  but  he  felt  from  the  first  that  the  result 
would  be  fatal.  He  dosed  himself  with  James's 
Powder  ;  but  prepared  placidly  for  the  end.  He 
desired  that  he  should  be  buried  in  the  village  of 
Dnuphinovka  (now  Stephanovka),  north  of  Kherson  ; 
that  his  funeral  should  be  without  pomp,  monument, 
or  monumental  inscription  ;  that  a  sundial  should 
be  placed  over  his  grave,  and  that  he  should  be 
forgotten.  These  injunctions,  conveyed  to  his  friend 
Admiral  Priestman,  an  English  officer  in  the  Russian 
service,  were  only  partially  carried  out.  His  grave 
was  marked,  not  by  a  sundial,  but  by  a  small,  white- 
washed brick  pyramid  without  inscription  ;  and 
although  the  burial  service  of  the  Church  of  England 
was  duly  read  over  the  remains,  a  quiet  funeral  was 
found  to  be  impracticable.  The  peasants  flocked  to 
the  obsequies  of  the  common  benefactor,  and  he  was 
followed  to  his  last  home  by  some  two  or  three 
thousand  spectators,  an  escort  of  cavalry,  and  a  crowd 
of  carriages,  including  the  sumptuous  equipage  of 
the  Prince  of  Moldavia  '  drawn  by  six  horses  covered 
with  scarlet  cloth  '. 


94  LATER  ESSAYS 

One  of  the  most  notable  things  in  Howard's  career 
is  the  dogged  way  in  which,  having  decided  that  his 
mission  in  life  was  that  of  Inspector-General  of 
Prisons  to  the  world  at  large,  he  entered  on  the 
duties  of  his  self-imposed  office.  Everything,  from 
the  first,  was  subordinated  to  the  task  in  hand — 
namely,  that  systematic  assembling  of  pieces  de 
conviction  which  he  regarded  as  an  indispensable 
preliminary  to  any  practical  improvement  in  the 
existing  state  of  things.  This  was  to  be  no  leisurely 
jog-trot  in  search  of  the  picturesque  ;  no  casual 
collecting  of  medals  by  an  opulent  Grand  Tourist. 
In  his  earlier  days  he  himself  had  been  a  purchaser 
of  pictures  and  a  frequenter  of  concerts.  But  it  was 
not  so  now.  '  I  have  unremittingly  pursued  the 
object  of  my  journey,'  he  wrote  in  1781,  '  and  have 
looked  into  no  palaces,  or  seen  any  curiosities.' 
Burke,  consciously  or  unconsciously,  expanded  this 
in  his  enthusiastic  eloge  at  Bristol.  Speaking  of 
Howard,  he  said,  '  He  visited  all  Europe,  not  to 
survey  the  stimptuousness  of  palaces,'  or  '  to  form 
a  scale  of  the  curiosity  of  modern  art ',  but  '  to 
remember  the  forgotten,  to  attend  to  the  neglected, 
to  visit  the  forsaken,  and  compare  and  collate  the 
distresses  of  all  men  in  all  countries  '.  And  Cowper 
echoes  or  anticipates  Burke  (for  their  words  belong 
to  the  same  year)  in  his  poem  of  Charity  : 

To  traverse  seas,  range  kingdoms,  and  bring  home. 
Not  the  proud  monuments  of  Greece  or  Rome, 
But  knowledge  such  as  only  dungeons  teach, 
And  only  sympathy  like  thine  could  reach  .  .  . 
Speaks  a  divine  ambition,  and  a  zeal, 
The  boldest  patriot  might  be  proud  to  feel. 

Akin  to  Howard's  tenacity  of  purpose  was  his 
fearlessness.    Lord  Fisher's  '  Fear  God,  and  Dread 


THE  JOURNEYS  OF  JOHN  HOWARD     95 

Nought  '  might  well  have  been  his  motto.  No 
doubt  to  his  indomitable  courage  is  to  be  traced 
something  of  the  marked  immunity  from  insult 
which  he  enjoyed  and  the  fact,  vouched  for  by  him- 
self, that  he  was  so  rarely  robbed.  Once  only,  in  the 
very  haunt  and  region  of '  clyfaking  ',  he  lost '  a  large 
new  pocket-handkerchief ',  but  even  this  was  in  due 
course  returned  to  him.  His  transparent  honesty, 
his  manifest  purity  of  motive,  and  his  persuasive 
benevolence  impressed  all  about  him.  An  incident 
related  in  Brown's  Memoirs  is  here  to  the  point. 
4  During  an  alarming  riot  at  the  Savoy,  the  prisoners 
had  killed  two  of  their  keepers,  and  no  person  dared 
to  approach  them  until  the  intrepid  Howard  insisted 
on  entering  their  prison.  In  vain  his  friends,  in  vain 
the  jailers  endeavoured  to  dissuade  him  :  in  he  went 
among  two  hundred  ruffians,  when  such  was  the 
effect  of  his  mild  and  benign  manner  that  they  soon 
listened  to  his  remonstrances,  represented  their 
grievances,  and  at  last  allowed  themselves  to  be 
quietly  reconducted  to  their  cells.' 1  This  disregard 
of  consequences,  as  we  have  seen  from  his  Malta 
visit,  extended  to  his  speech.  It  was  impossible  to 
prevent  him  from  saying  what  he  believed  to  be  the 
truth  ;  and  though  to  potentates  like  the  Emperor 
Joseph  his  plain  speaking  must  have  been  a  refresh- 
ing novelty,  many  diplomatic  green-baize  doors 
must  have  been  hurriedly  closed  during  the  cold 
outpour  of  his  incorruptible  veracity. 

That  Howard's  work,  in  its  essence,  was  pro- 
visional and  preparatory,  and  that  his  magnetic 
personal  influence  ceased  with  his  death,  may  be 
admitted.  But  he  was  one  of  those  unselfish 
reformers  who,  secure  in  the  inherent  soundness  of 
their  cause,  are  content  to  leave  to  the  future — the 
1  Brown's  Memoirs,  2nd  ed.,  1823,  p.  393. 


96  LATER  ESSAYS 

dilatory  and  deliberate  future — the  task  of  com- 
pleting what  they  themselves  have  painfully  and 
laboriously  begun.  Nevertheless,  it  was  Howard 
who  set  the  ball  rolling ;  and  with  Howard  alone 
originate  the  modern  improvements  in  prison  dis- 
cipline. For  the  rest,  he  was  emphatically  what 
Pope  would  have  called  '  a  right  good  man  '-  -  a 
faithful  friend,  an  affectionate  husband,  a  practising 
Christian.  He  was  liberal  to  servants  and  depen- 
dents, and  largely  charitable  to  his  poorer  neighbours, 
in  whose  welfare  he  took  the  keenest  interest.  If 
his  conception  of  justice  was  sometimes  considered 
austere,  it  was  not  unfrequently  tempered  by  a  sense 
of  humour.  Despite  his  '  dour  '  expression,  he  is 
said  to  have  been  gentle  in  manners  and  very  cour-  • 
teous — especially  to  women.  With  weaker  vessels 
of  his  own  sex,  it  is  intelligible  that  his  strict  sense 
of  duty,  and  his  rigidly  abstemious  habits,  occasion- 
ally exposed  him  to  the  charge  of  singularity.  That 
is  the  involuntary  homage  of  the  self-indulgent  to 
the  self-respecting.  But  no  one  could  accuse  him  of 
hypocrisy,  for  he  was  unaffected  by  human  praise 
and  blame.  His  one  object  in  life  was  to  get  on  with 
what  he  conceived  to  be  his  special  vocation — to 
alleviate  the  misery  of  a  large  section  of  his  suffering 
fellow-creatures.  And  if  ever  there  was  a  man  who 
acted  religiously  on  the  Pauline  precept, '  Remember 
them  that  are  in  bonds,'  that  man  was  John  Howard. 


'THE  LEARNED  MRS.  CARTER' 

SIR  THOMAS  LAWRENCE'S  crayon  drawing  at  the 
National  Portrait  Gallery  represents  Mrs.  Carter  as 
a  downcast-eyed  and  benignant  old  lady  in  a  white 
muslin  '  mob  '  with  a  broad  scarlet  ribbon.  In 
Mackenzie's  engraving  of  the  cameo  in  wax  which 
was  modelled  by  Joachim  Smith  for  Lady  Charlotte 
Finch,  one  of  Mrs.  Carter's  many  friends,  she  is 
shown  with  the  clear-cut  profile  of  a  dignified  and 
handsome  woman  ;  and  this  is  affirmed  by  her 
nephew  and  executor  to  be  '  a  very  good  and  strik- 
ing likeness  '.*  Here  she  wears  an  elaborate  round- 
eared  lace  head-dress.  To  supplement  these  appar- 
ently conflicting  similitudes,  we  may  reproduce  the 
written  snapshot  of  a  contemporary  who  met  Mrs. 
Carter,  in  1785,  at  one  of  Mrs.  Vesey's  '  Babels  '. 
'  She  seems  about  sixty  [she  was  really  sixty- 
eight]  and  is  rather  fat ;  she  is  no  way  striking  in 
her  appearance,  and  was  dressed  in  a  scarlet  gown 
and  petticoat,  with  a  plain  undress  cap  and  perfectly 
flat  head.  A  small  work-bag  was  hanging  at  her 
arm,  out  of  which  she  drew  some  knitting  as  soon 
as  she  was  seated  ;  but  with  no  fuss  or  airs.  She 
entered  into  the  conversation  with  that  ease  which 
persons  have  when  both  their  thoughts  and  words 
are  at  command,  and  with  no  toss  of  the  head,  no 
sneer,  no  emphatic  look,  in  fact  no  affected  con- 
sequence of  any  kind.'  To  this  should  be  prefixed 
Miss  Burney's  verdict  at  Bath  five  years  earlierj 
After  speaking  of  her  as  '  noble-looking  ',  she  goes 
on — '  I  never  saw  age  so  graceful  in  the  female  sex 

'  Pennington's  Memoirs,  4th  ed.,  1825,  i  501  n. 
H 


98  LATER  ESSAYS 

yet  ;    her  whole  face  seems  to  beam  with  goodness, 
piety,  and  philanthropy.'  1 

Miss  Alice  Gaussen,  Mrs.  Carter's  latest  biographer, 
from  whom  the  first-quoted  passage  is  borrowed,2 
frankly  confesses  that  her  heroine's  life  has  no 
story.  This  is  so,  though  Miss  Gaussen  has  gallantly 
done  her  best  to  disprove  it.  Elizabeth,  or  Eliza, 
Carter  was  born  at  Deal  on  December  16.  1717, 
being  the  eldest  daughter  of  the  Rev.  Nicholas 
Carter,  D.D.,  Perpetual  Curate  of  Deal  Chapel,  and 
one  of  the  six  preachers  at  Canterbury  Cathedral. 
Elizabeth's  mother,  Dr.  Carter's  first  wife,  was  the 
only  daughter  and  heiress  of  Richard  Swayne  of 
Bere  Regis  in  Dorset.  The  greater  part  of  the  con- 
siderable fortune  she  brought  her  husband  dis- 
appeared with  the  bursting  of  the  South  Sea  Bubble, 
a  disaster  which  is  supposed  to  have  induced,  or 
promoted,  the  decline  of  which  she  eventually  died, 
when  Elizabeth  was  about  ten  years  old.  Dr.  Carter 
was  an  accomplished  Greek,  Latin,  and  Hebrew 
scholar,  who  acted  as  preceptor  to  his  children. 
His  daughter  seems  early  to  have  formed  the  desire 
to  follow  in  his  steps  ;  but  her  initial  efforts  were 
not  equal  to  her  aspirations.  She  was  at  first  as 
preternaturally  slow  and  dull  as  Goldsmith,  so 
much  so,  indeed,  that  her  desponding  parent  re- 
peatedly exhorted  her  to  desist  from  what  he 
regarded  as  an  unsound  ambition.  But  by  dint  of 
early  rising  and  dogged  perseverance,  combined 
with  such  extraneous  aids  to  erudition  as  wet 
towels,  coffee,  green  tea,  and  snuff  (all  of  which  are 
specified),  she  gradually  overcame  her  native  dis- 
abilities, although,  in  the  process,  she  probably  laid 

1  Diary,  1904,  i.  391. 

1  A  Woman  of  Wit  and  Wisdom,  by  Miss  Alice  C.  C.  Gaussen, 
1906,  p.  150. 


'  THE  LEARNED  MRS.  CARTER  '        99 

the  foundation  of  the  distressing  chronic  headaches 
which  lasted  her  lifetime.  Her  tastes  were  primarily 
linguistic.  French  she  acquired  aufond  from  a  refugee 
Huguenot  pastor  at  Canterbury  with  whom  she 
boarded  for  a  twelvemonth  ;  while  in  Latin,  Greek, 
and  Hebrew  her  father  instructed  her  in  common 
with  her  brothers.  Spanish,  Italian,  and  German 
she  taught  herself,  going  on  in  later  life  to  learn 
something  of  Portuguese  and  finally  of  Arabic.  As 
a  linguist  she  put  the  spirit  above  the  letter,  pro- 
fessing to  care  little  for  grammar,  though,  as  a 
matter  of  fact,  in  this  respect  she  was  more  fully 
equipped  than  she  pretended.  Johnson,  at  all 
events,  placed  her  very  high  among  contemporary 
Grecians,  since  he  once  said  of  an  unnamed  though 
celebrated  scholar  (Dr.  Birkbeck  Hill  says  '  perhaps 
Langton  '),  '  that  he  understood  Greek  better  than 
any  one  whom  he  had  ever  known,  except  Elizabeth 
Carter  '  ;  and  it  is  on  record  that  she  once  effectively 
confuted  Archbishop  Seeker  with  regard  to  a  Greek 
construction.  Language,  however,  did  not  wholly 
absorb  her  youthful  energies.  She  was  very  fond 
of  mathematics,  history,  and  geography — ancient 
geography  in  particular.  '  She  was,  literally  '• — 
says  her  first  biographer — '  better  acquainted  with 
the  meanderings  of  the  Peneus  and  the  course  of 
the  Ilissus,  than  she  was  with  those  of  the  Thames 
or  Loire ' 1 — a  perverted  proficiency  which,  accord- 
ing to  a  well-known  anecdote,  should  have  earned 
her  the  sympathy  of  Charles  Lamb.  In  addition, 
she  was  especially  partial  to  astronomy  and  astro- 
logy. Music,  too,  attracted  her.  She  played,  not 
very  successfully  by  her  own  account,  on  the  spinet 
as  well  as  on  that  eighteenth-century  corrective  to 
melancholy,  the  German  flute.  She  dabbled  also 
1  Memoirs,  4th  ed.,  1825,  i.  17. 
II  2 


100  LATER  ESSAYS 

in  drawing  and  painting.  All  this  intense  applica- 
tion, abstruse  and  otherwise,  was,  it  must  be  con- 
fessed, not  undiversified  by  lighter  distractions. 
Besides  being  unpretentious,  she  was  cheerful  and 
sociable,  qualities  which  speedily  made  her  a  desir- 
able inmate  of  many  county  houses  ;  and  she  often 
paid  long  winter  visits  to  relatives  in  London, 
where  she  soon  found  admiring  friends.  Nor,  not- 
withstanding a  serious  cast  of  mind,  were  her 
tastes  inexorably  ascetic.  Not  only  was  she,  unlike 
many  of  her  contemporaries,  a  fanatic  for  fresh 
air,  and  used,  as  her  solitary  cosmetic,  cold  water, 
but  at  Deal  she  was  accustomed  to  vary  her  desk 
work  (as  Dickens  did)  by  vigorous  walking  exercise  ; 
and,  as  a  classic,  must  have  interpreted  the  Horatian 
neque  tu  choreas  sperne  as  applicable  to  both  sexes, 
since,  for  a  time  at  least,  her  unexpended  vitality 
found  its  escape  in  energetic  dancing.  She  speaks, 
on  one  occasion,  of  having  walked  three  miles  in 
a  high  wind,  danced  nine  hours,  and  then  walked 
home  again.  After  thus  '  playing  the  rake  ',  as 
she  calls  it,  it  is  not  surprising  to  find  that  she  took 
part,  with  her  brothers  and  sisters,  in  a  perform- 
ance of  Cato  (presumably  the  memorable  work  of 
Mr.  Joseph  Addison),  the  title-role  being  read  by 
her  father — nay,  that  once,  when  Canterbury  went 
stage  mad,  she  even  acted  a  king  and  wore  a  sword. 
When  she  was  nearing  twenty,  she  seems  to  have 
had  some  prospect  of  a  Court  appointment — a 
prospect  which  not  unnaturally  found  favour  with 
her  father.  Recognizing,  with  Marcus  Aurelius  and 
Matthew  Arnold,  that  '  even  in  a  palace  life  may 
be  led  well  ',  he  wrote  to  her  from  Bath  an  elegant 
Latin  epistle  expressing  his  concurrence.1  But, 

1  *  Virtus  est  quid  cuique  proprium  in  omnibus  locis  ;  virtus 
igitur  non  minus  propria  atque  Integra  est  in  aulis,  quam  in 
TUTC.'  (Memoirs,  1825,  4th  ed.,  i.  14  n.) 


'  THE  LEARNED  MRS.  CARTER  '       101 

apart  from  the  preliminary  study  of  German  wliieli 
he  enjoined,  the  plan  apparently  came  to  nothing  ; 
and  with  it,  due  allowance  being  made  for  different 
temperaments,  the  chances  of  a  familiar  record 
corresponding  with,  if  not  rivalling,  the  picturesque 
Kew  and  Windsor  pages  of  Fanny  Burney's  Diary. 

Some  time  in  the  following  year,  however,  she 
issued  privately,  as  a  quarto  of  twenty-four  pages, 
a  selection  from  the  numerous  occasional  verses  she 
had  contributed  to  the  Gentleman's  Magazine  since 
1734,  under  the  signature  of  '  Eliza  '.  The  pamphlet 
had  no  author's  or  publisher's  name  ;  but  it  mani- 
festly came  from  the  press  of  Edward  Cave,  since 
there  was  a  cut  of  St.  John's  Gate,  Clerkenwell,  on 
the  title  page  ;  and  Cave,  who  printed  her  father's 
sermons  in  this  very  year,  1738,  was  well  known  to 
him.  The  verses  are  of  a  mingled  yarn  and  mainly 
imitative.  Youthful  paraphrases  of  Horace  ;  lines  to 
the  memory  of  Her  Sacred  Majesty  Caroline  of  Ans- 
bach,  recently  deceased  ;  ode  to  her  thresher-poet, 
Stephen  Duck,  beginning  ingenuously — 'Accept, 
O  Duck,  the  Muse's  grateful  lay  '  ;  an  address  to 
Fortune,  palpably  echoing  Young — these,  with  a 
deprecatory  motto  from  Euripides,  make  up  the 
farrago  libelli.  It  would  be  too  much  to  say  that 
they  show  great  poetical  promise  ;  and,  with  two 
exceptions,  she  herself  did  not  venture  to  reprint 
them. 

But  they  are  interesting  on  another  ground — 
namely,  that  they  inaugurate  that  lifelong  friend- 
ship of  the  writer  with  Samuel  Johnson,  which  had 
its  origin  in  their  year  of  publication.  To  the 
'  Poetical  Essays  '  in  the  Gentleman's  Magazine  for 
February  1738,  *  Eliza  '  had  contributed  '  A  Riddle  '. 
In  the  following  April,  Johnson  responded  by  two 
Greek  and  Latin  epigrams,  to  the  former  of  which 


102  LATER  ESSAYS 

lie  thus  refers  in  an  undated  but  obviously  earlier 
letter  to  Cave.  '  I  have  composed  a  Greek  epigram 
to  Eliza,  and  think  she  ought  to  be  celebrated  in 
as  many  different  languages  as  Lewis  le  Grand.'  1 
From  this  it  would  follow  that  he  must  already 
have  been  introduced  to  her,  or  was  shortly  to 
make  her  acquaintance.  In  any  case,  after  Cave's 
death,  he  expressly  recalled  the  fact  that  Cave  had 
first  brought  them  together.  '  Poor  dear  Cave  ! 
I  owed  him  much  ;  for  to  him  I  owe  that  I  have 
known  you,'  he  wrote.2  In  the  next  month  (May), 
his  own  London  came  out  anonymously,  and,  in  the 
brief  space  of  a  week,  ran  into  two  editions.  But 
at  this  date  the  worthy  Dr.  Carter,  then  Vicar  of 
Tilmanstone,  had  never  so  much  as  heard  of  him. 
'  You  mention  Johnson,'  he  tells  his  daughter  in 
June,  no  doubt  apropos  of  the  epigrams,  '  but  that 
is  a  name  with  which  I  am  utterly  unacquainted. 
Neither  his  scholastic,  critical,  or  poetical  character 
ever  reached  my  ears.'  3  This  ignorance  was  excus- 
able ;  for,  in  truth,  Johnson  had  published  prac- 
tically nothing.  He  was  a  new-comer  at  St.  John's 
Gate,  having  only  in  the  preceding  year  made 
with  Garrick  his  adventurous  invasion  of  the  great 
city  he  was  to  satirize  so  sternly,  and  to  love  so 
well. 

Almost  simultaneously  with  Johnson's  London 
had  appeared  Pope's  satire,  One  Thousand  Seven 
Hundred  and  Thirty-Eight ;  and  Pope  (as  all  the 
world  knows)  had  generously  expressed  his  opinion 
that  the  new  imitator  of  Juvenal  would  soon  be 
unearthed.  It  is  with  Pope  that  Mrs.  Carter's 
prentice  prose  essay  is  connected.  Under  the  title 

1  Hill's  Johnson,  1887,  i.  122. 

2  Hill's  Johnson's  Letters,  1892,  i.  55. 

3  Memoirs,  1825,  i.  39. 


'  THE  LEARNED  MRS.  CARTER  ' 

An  Examination  of  Mr.  Pope's  Essay  on  Man : 
translated  from  the  French  of  M.  Crouzaz,  M.R.A. 
of  Sciences  at  Paris  and  Bordeaux,  and  Professor  of 
Philosophy  and  Mathematics  at  Lausanne,  she  trans- 
lated the  Swiss  critique  of  those  ambiguous  utter- 
ances with  respect  to  revealed  religion  from  which 
Warburton  afterwards  endeavoured  to  extricate  the 
Twickenham  poet.  Her  version  was  extremely 
careful,  and  earned  a  eulogistic  Latin  epigram  from 
her  father.  But  its  theme  belongs  to  Pope's  bio- 
graphy rather  than  Mrs.  Carter's  ;  and  there  is  no 
evidence  that  she  had  any  personal  relations  with 
Pope  himself.  She  followed  up  this  translation 
from  the  French  by  another,  from  the  Italian,  of 
Algarotti's  Newtonianismo  per  le  Dame,  thus  Eng- 
lished— Sir  Isaac  Newton's  Philosophy  explained, 
for  the  Use  of  the  Ladies,  in  six  Dialogues,  on  Light 
and  Colours.  This,  which  Cave  printed,  was  also 
held  to  be  capably  executed,  and  was  highly  praised 
by  Dr.  Birch  and  others.  Count  Algarotti  was  then 
in  England,  and  it  is  possible  that  his  translatress 
may  have  met  him.  But  it  must  be  concluded  that 
these  efforts  were  either  commissions,  or  what 
Carlyle  would  have  called  mere  journey-work  in 
defect  of  better,  for  she  seldom  referred  to  them. 
Her  biographer  finds  evidence  that  the  dedication 
of  the  Algarotti  was  corrected  in  proof  by  Johnson. 
Through  Johnson,  too,  it  must  have  been  that, 
at  this  date,  Miss  Carter  made  the  acquaintance  of 
another  of  Cave's  contributors,  the  notorious  and 
unfortunate  Richard  Savage.  Her  biographer  prints 
two  of  the  letters  Savage  wrote  to  her  in  May  1739, 
or  a  few  weeks  before  his  final  departure  (for  his 
own  good  and  to  the  relief  of  his  friends)  into  exile 
at  Swansea.  Their  pretext  is  a  permission,  implied 
or  given  by  the  lady  to  Savage,  to  send  her  a  printed 


104  LATER  ESSAYS 

copy  of  his  Life  ;  and  they  are  couched  in  those 
terms  of  florid  adulation  which  were  apparently 
their  writer's  standard  of  compliment.  Another  of 
her  correspondents  at  this  period  was  the  precocious 
prodigy,  John  Philip  Barretier,  who  was  reported  to 
have  mastered  five  languages  at  the  mature  age  of 
nine.  He  was  now  seventeen,  and  hearing  from 
some  of  the  swarming  refugees  at  Canterbury  of  the 
rival  acquirements  of  '  Eliza  ',  had  expressed  a  desire 
to  be  permitted  to  write  to  her.  '  Eliza  ',  having, 
as  in  duty  bound,  sought  counsel  of  her  father  and 
obtained  his  permission  (in  Latin),  letters  were 
accordingly  exchanged.  Two  of  Barretier's  have 
been  preserved.  By  all  accounts  he  was  a  worthy 
and  exemplary  young  man.  But  his  conception  of 
a  correspondence  d'esprit  must  have  been  framed 
upon  faulty  models.  For  his  epistles,  although  they 
include  some  interesting  personal  details  regarding 
his  views  and  pursuits,  are  largely  occupied  by 
stilted  verbiage  and  pretentious  polyglot.  He 
apostrophizes  his  correspondent  in  French,  as  the 
Nymphe  Elize,  who  gets  Apollo  to  write  her  verses  ; 
and  in  Latin,  as  Virgo  nobilissima,  Angliae  sidus, 
orbis  literati  decus — and  so  forth.  Even  her  admiring 
biographer  and  executor  is  constrained  to  confess 
that  all  this  is  more  in  the  vein  of  a  French  petit- 
maltre  than  of  the  anticipated  Scholar,  Philosopher, 
and  Theologian.  And,  indeed,  it  is  difficult  to 
believe  that  this  boyish  rigmarole  can  ever  have 
been  acceptable  to  its  accomplished  young  recipient, 
whose  leading  characteristic  was  common  sense  and 
whose  dislike  of  flattery  was  unaffected.  That  she 
acknowledged  the  first  of  Barretier's  communica- 
tions is  clear  from  his  words  in  the  second  ;  but  we 
have  no  information  as  to  the  nature  of  her  reply. 
In  October  1740  Barretier  died  ;  and  Johnson  wrote 


'  THE  LEARNED  MRS.  CARTER  '       105 

an  account  of  him  for  Mr.  Urban's  pages.1  But  by 
this  time  Miss  Carter  had  found  a  new  correspondent 
as  well  as  a  lifelong  friend  in  the  Miss  Catherine 
Talbot  to  whom  so  many  of  her  letters  were  hence- 
forth to  be  addressed. 

Miss  Talbot — for  our  present  purpose — deserves 
a  fuller  notice  than  either  Savage  or  Barretier.  She 
was  the  only  daughter  of  the  Rev.  Edward  Talbot, 
who  was  the  second  son  of  Bishop  Talbot  of  Durham, 
and  brother  to  Charles,  first  Lord  Talbot,  and  Lord 
High  Chancellor  of  England.  Her  father  died  in 
1720,  and  in  the  same  year,  five  months  after  his 
death,  she  was  born.  Dr.  Seeker,  afterwards  Bishop 
of  Oxford  and  Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  had  been 
Edward  Talbot's  closest  friend,  and  in  course  of 
time  the  widow  and  her  daughter  became  per- 
manent members  of  the  Seeker  household.  Miss 
Carter  first  met  Miss  Talbot  at  the  house  of  a  Canter- 
bury friend,  through  Wright  the  astronomer,  and 
they  became  greatly  attached  to  each  other.  Miss 
Carter  was  three  years  older  than  Miss  Talbot  ;  but 
Miss  Talbot  had  already  a  certain  social  reputation 
for  exceptional  ability  ;  and,  as  related  in  an  earlier 
paper  of  this  series,  contributed  to  the  once  famous 
Athenian  Letters.  She  had  been  very  carefully 
educated,  had  considerable  intellectual  gifts,  and 
a  lively  imagination.  Her  youth  had  been  passed 
among  learned  and  distinguished  personages,  one 
of  her  best  and  most  valued  advisers  being  the  great 
Bishop  Butler  of  the  Analogy,  who  was  devoted  to 
her  father.  Under  her  auspices  Miss  Carter  was 
speedily  at  home  in  the  Seeker  circle.  She  became 
a  great  favourite  with  the  Bishop,  who  soon  play- 
fully addressed  her  as  '  Madam  Carter  ',  and  she 

1  Gentleman's  Magazine,  1740,  x.  612,  and  1741,  xi.  87. 


106  LATER  ESSAYS 

was  always  a  persona  grata  at  the  Bishop's  Oxford 
Palace  of  Cuddesdon,  and  the  Archiepiscopal  Palace 
at  Lambeth.  She  had,  in  fact,  found  a  suitable  field 
for  the  evolution  of  the  more  serious  side  of  her 
character  underlying  the  thirst  for  learning  which 
had  hitherto  seemed  to  absorb  her  energies,  and  (if 
she  ever  had  them)  her  ambitions.  The  Algarotti 
translation  had  already  introduced  her  to  an  amiable 
Countess  of  Hertford  to  whom  Thomson  had  dedi- 
cated his  Spring.  In  the  Seeker  coterie  she  was  to 
come  into  contact  not  only  with  such  aristocratic 
luminaries  as  Lyttelton  and  William  Pulteney,  Earl 
of  Bath,  but  with  numerous  other  people,  learned 
or  clerical,  who  were  fully  capable  of  estimating,  at 
the  right  value,  both  her  unusual  acquirements  and 
her  natural  parts.  This  happy  consummation  she 
manifestly  owed  to  Miss  Talbot.  And  it  is  not 
unreasonable  to  assume  that  to  Miss  Talbot  also 
she  was  indebted  for  the  development  of  those  early 
principles  and  that  graver  note  in  her  character 
which  led  Dr.  Burney,  years  after,  to  speak  of 
'  Carter's  piety  and  learning  ',  and  to  give  the 
priority  to  '  piety  '. 

However  this  may  be,  there  is  no  doubt  that  to 
Miss  Talbot  she  was  indebted  for  the  stimulus  which 
prompted  her  to  enter  upon  the  central  task  of  her 
life,  the  translation  of  Epictetus — 

That  halting  slave,  who  in  Nicopolis 
Taught  Arrian,  when  Vespasian's  brutal  son 
Cleared  Rome  of  what  most  shamed  him — 

i.  e.  the  Philosophers.  At  Cuddesdon  and  Lambeth 
it  seems  to  have  been  the  custom  to  have  daily 
readings  of  the  best  authors,  ancient  and  modern  ; 
and  Miss  Talbot,  who  had  been  austerely  studying 
Epictetus  before  breakfast,  was  greatly  exercised  by 


'  THE  LEARNED  MRS.  CARTER  '       107 

the  absence  of  a  satisfactory  version  of  that  philo- 
sopher's homely  discourses,  as  reported  by  Arrian. 
She  eventually  persuaded  her  friend  to  undertake 
the  preparation  of  an  adequate  rendering  of  his 
entire  remains,  duly  equipped  with  introduction 
and  notes.  With  the  concurrence  of  Dr.  Seeker, 
Miss  Carter  began  her  work  in  1749,  and  in  her 
thirty-second  year.  Working  slowly,  and  avoiding 
fatigue,  she  continued  to  be  engaged  on  it  until  its 
completion  in  1756.  The  book  went  to  the  press 
in  the  following  year,  and  was  issued  as  a  subscrip- 
tion quarto  in  1758.  There  were  one  thousand  and 
thirty-one  subscribers  at  a  guinea,  and  one  thousand 
two  hundred  and  sixty-eight  copies  were  struck  off. 
The  result  to  the  translator  was  a  profit  of  nearly 
a  thousand  pounds.  A  second  edition  in  two 
volumes  12mo  appeared  in  1759  ;  a  third  in  1768. 
A  fourth  edition  followed,  after  the  translator's 
death.  The  full  title  of  the  book  was — All  the 
Works  of  Epictetus,  which  are  now  extant  ;  consisting 
of  his  Discourses,  preserved  by  Arrian,  in  four  Books, 
The  Enchiridion,1  and  Fragments.  Translated  from 
the  original  Greek,  by  Elizabeth  Carter.  With  an 
Introduction,  and  Notes,  by  the  Translator.  It  was 
printed  by  Samuel  Richardson,  the  novelist ;  and 
sold  by  Millar,  Rivington  and  the  Dodsleys.  And 
to  it  was  prefixed  a  poetically  irregular  but  theo- 
logically orthodox  ode  by  M.  H.,  reversed  initials 
which  are  understood  to  veil  the  identity  of  a  new 
friend,  Hester  or  Hecky  Mulso,  afterwards  Mrs. 
Chapone,  to  whom  Miss  Carter  had  recommended 
'  the  Stoic  Philosophy,  as  productive  of  Fortitude  \ 
The  success  of  the  translation  was  both  merited 
and  adventitious.  '  Merited  '  because  it  was  a 

1  The  Enchiridion  had  been  translated,  at  a  hand-gallop, 
by  Lady  Mary  Wortley  Montagu,  out  of  the  Latin. 


108  LATER  ESSAYS 

conscientious  piece  of  craggy  hard  work,  pursued  with 
adequate  equipment  and  achieved  by  unflagging 
perseverance.  It  was  not,  in  any  sense,  like  the 
performances  of  Fielding's  Mr.  Bookweight,  '  merely 
a  handsome  way  of  asking  one's  friends  for  a 
guinea  ' — an  anticipation  of  '  Proposals  '  which  it 
was  never  intended  to  materialize.  But  it  was 
'  adventitious  '  in  that  Miss  (or  as  we  may  now 
call  her,  Mrs.)  Carter's  troops  of  friends,  together 
with  her  established  reputation  as  a  learned  lady, 
made  the  task  of  soliciting  subscriptions  an  easy 
matter.1  And  there  was  a  third  reason  which  also 
greatly  helped  her.  It  was  rightly  held  to  be  remark- 
able that  a  work  distinguished  by  so  much  solid 
erudition  should  have  come  from  a  woman.  This 
alone  was  sufficient  to  justify  the  '  Philaretes  '  of 
St.  John's  Gate  in  likening  her  to  the  famous 
Mme  Dacier.  Finally,  and  this  is  perhaps  the  best 
argument  of  all,  her  Epictetus  was,  at  this  date,  the 
best  available  rendering  in  English  of  a  book  con- 
cerning which  there  was  a  certain  floating  curiosity. 
It  continued  to  sell  through  the  remainder  of  the 
century ;  and  her  friend  Dr.  Seeker,  by  this  time 
Archbishop  of  Canterbury,  complained  humorously 
that  while  his  own  invaluable  sermons  were  to  be 
procured  at  half-price,  Madam  Carter's  Epictetus 
fetched  nearly  as  much  as  the  original  subscription. 
Even  in  1768,  when  the  third  edition  came  out, 
Messrs.  Rivington  of  the  '  Bible  and  Sun  '  in  St. 
Paul's  Churchyard,  found  it  worth  their  while  to 
advertise  concurrently  a  '  beautiful  edition  '  in 
royal  quarto.2 

1  Many  persons,  who  figure  in  these  pages,  subscribed. 
Johnson,  of  course,  is  in  the  list,  and  Heberden  took  si\c 
copies. 

»  These  unavoidable  bibliographical  details  need  not  here 


'  THE  LEARNED  MRS.  CARTER  '       109 

This  translation,  it  has  been  said,  occupied  Mrs. 
Carter  about  nine  years,  a  period  which  may  at 
first  sight  seem  to  be  excessive.  But  the  work 
was  interrupted  by  many  miscellaneous  avocations. 
Besides  those  domestic  functions  which  she  con- 
scientiously regarded  as  part  of  her  calling  in  life, 
she  had  family  duties  of  a  more  exacting  character. 
Her  father  had  married  again  ;  and  the  training  of 
her  youngest  brother,  Henry,  fell  almost  exclusively 
on  her — until,  in  1756,  he  entered  a  pensioner  at 
Bene't  College,  Cambridge.  This  must  have  taken 
much  of  her  time  ;  and,  as  her  biographer  observes, 
was  then  probably  the  only  instance  of  a  student 
at  Cambridge  who  was  indebted  for  his  previous 
education  to  one  of  the  other  sex.  In  any  case, 
taken  in  connexion  with  her  labours  as  a  translator, 
these  employments  sufficiently  account  for  the  fact 
that  her  purely  literary  output  for  some  years  seems 
to  have  been  confined  to  a  couple  of  contributions 
to  Johnson's  Rambler,  Nos.  44  and  100.  The  former 
of  these  is  a  serious  but  not  sombre  contrast  between 
superstition  and  religion  ;  the  latter,  acting  up  to 
the  Circum  praecordia  ludit  of  its  motto,  rallies,  in 
a  sprightly  manner,  the  unprofitable  rewards  of 
fashionable  dissipation.  Both  papers  show  that 
she  might  have  easily  competed,  if  not  with  the 
Great  Cham,  at  all  events  with  Richardson  and 
Hawkesworth. 

be  extended  by  minuter  examination  of  Mrs.  Carter's  chef- 
d'oeuvre.  The  critics  of  the  day  liberally  recognized  its 
merits,  and  Lyttelton  rightly  commended  '  the  deep  learning, 
correct  judgement,  and  truly  Christian  piety  '  displayed  in 
the  introduction  and  notes.  But  it  has  now  been  superseded 
by  the  labours  of  Long  and  later  scholars.  As  to  the 
doctrines  of  Epictetus,  the  curious  may  consult  Dr.  Abbott's 
Silanus  the  Christian,  and  the  charming  anthology  of 
Mr.  Hastings  Crossley  in  the  Golden  Treasury  Series. 


110  LATER  ESSAYS 

But  although  her  prose  work  was  inconsiderable, 
and  she  attached  little  importance  to  her  first 
poetical  flights,  she  still  intermittently  adventured 
in  verse.  An  anonymous  Ode  to  Melancholy  was 
printed  in  the  Gentleman's  Magazine  for  November 
1739,  and  was  greatly  admired — by  her  admirers. 
A  more  ambitious  Ode  to  Wisdom,  much  circulated 
(privately)  circa  1746,  was  actually  appropriated  by 
Richardson,  who  conveyed  it  en  bloc  to  the  earlier 
pages  of  Clarissa,  then  in  progress,  and  even  went 
so  far  as  to  let  his  heroine  set  the  last  three  stanzas 
to  music  (Letter  liv).  Upon  expostulation,  he 
explained  (of  course  at  considerable  length)  that  he 
had  desired  to  '  do  honour  to  the  sex  ',  and  enliven 
his  little  [!]  work,  already  '  perhaps  too  solemn  ',  by 
so  valuable  an  addition  to  its  pages — an  amende 
honorable  which  was,  of  course,  graciously  accepted.1 
Later,  by  the  popularity  of  these  and  subsequent 
pieces,  complimentary  or  occasional,  and  the 
friendly  solicitations  of  Lord  Bath,  Lord  Lyttelton, 
and  a  new  ally,  the  blue-stocking  Mrs.  Montagu, 
Mrs.  Carter  was  persuaded  to  collect  her  more 
recent  metrical  efforts  into  a  12mo  volume.  This 
was  published  in  1762.  It  was  dedicated,  by 
invitation,  to  Lord  Bath  (it  is  said,  indeed,  that 
deferring  to  the  author's  dislike  to  laudation,  he 
drafted  the  dedication  himself !),  and  it  was  preceded 
by  some  high-pitched  commendatory  blank  verse 
from  the  pen  of  Lyttelton,  who  had  read  the  book  in 
MS.  Correct  and  academic,  it  no  doubt  showed  much 
technical  advance  on  its  youthful  predecessor,  and 
the  Monthly  Reviewers,  as  in  duty  bound,  promptly 
found  in  it  both  the  philosophy  of  Epictetus  and 
the  felicity  of  Horace.  Its  prevalent  note  is  of  the 

1  An  author's  version  of  the  poem  then  appeared,  still 
anonymously,  in  the  Gentleman's  Magazine  for  Dec.  1747, 


'  THE  LEARNED  MRS.  CARTER  '       111 

fashionable  elegiac  kind  at  which  Goldsmith  laughs 
gently  in  the  novel  he  was  then  composing * ;  and  its 
exemplary  sentiments  must  have  gratified  those  to 
whom  they  were  addressed.  But  they  rouse  faint 
raptures  now  ;  and  cannot  justly  be  held  to  rise 
to  the  superior  altitudes  claimed  for  them  by  the 
enthusiastic  bard  of  Hagley,  who  was  impressed  by 
their  high  morality.  It  should,  however,  be  borne 
in  mind  that  prescription  was  at  a  premium  ;  and 
that  those  were  days  when  such  a  poet  as  Mason 
was  likened,  in  one  breath,  to  Homer,  Pindar, 
Virgil,  Plato,  and  Sophocles  2 — comparisons  which 
seem  to  indicate  some  passing  derangement  of  the 
critical  atmosphere.3  Perhaps  the  most  interesting 
biographical  fact  about  these  Poems  on  Several 
Occasions  is  that  a  visit  of  the  little  knot  of  friends 
above  mentioned  to  Tunbridge  Wells  in  1761,  when 
the  volume  was  projected,  was,  apparently,  the 
primary  cause  of  that  later  excursion  to  Spa  in 
1763  which,  after  the  translation  of  Epictetus,  con- 
stitutes the  next  and,  indeed,  the  capital  event 
in  Mrs.  Carter's  history.  It  occupies  an  abnormal 
space  in  her  Memoirs  ;  and  no  excuse  is  needed  for 
some  record  of  it  here. 

When  this  took  place,  an  expedition  to  the 
Continental  health  resort  which  has  given  its  name 
to  so  many  mineral  springs  was  still  what  Dudley, 

1  '  I  have  wept  so  much  at  all  sorts  of  elegies  of  late  that 
without  an  enlivening  glass  [of  gooseberry  wine]  I  am  sure 
this  will  overcome  me.'     (Vicar  of  Wakefield,  chap,  xvii.) 

2  Gentleman's  Magazine,  March  1752. 

3  It  is  but  fair  to  add  that  Mrs.  Carter's  poems  passed  into 
several  editions.    The  Ode  to  Wisdom  was  done  into  Dutch 
for  Pastor  Stinstra's  version  of  Clarissa  ;  and,  in  1796  some 
other  of  the  pieces  found  an  admiring  French  translator,  the 
Count  de  Bedec.    But  her  efforts  have  obtained  no  abiding 
home  in  modern  anthologies. 


112  LATER  ESSAYS 

Lord  North,  had  called  it  in  1637,  '  a  chargeable 
and  inconvenient  journey  to  sick  bodies  '.  Save  in 
exceptional  conditions,  it  would  have  been  imprac- 
ticable to  an  elderly  gentlewoman  of  moderate 
means.  The  party  was  made  up  of  Lord  Bath  and 
his  chaplain,  Dr.  Douglas  (Goldsmith's  '  scourge  of 
impostors  and  terror  of  quacks  '),  Mr.  and  Mrs. 
Montagu,  Mrs.  Carter,  and  several  servants.  They 
quitted  Dover  early  on  June  4,  and  reached  Calais 
the  same  day,  putting  up  at  the  famous  Lion 
d' Argent,  commemorated  fourteen  years  before  by 
Hogarth  in  his  picture  of  The  Roast  Beef  of  Old 
England,  and  certainly  familiar  to  Sterne  in  1762. 
It  was  not  the  Dessin's  of  the  later  Sentimental 
Journey ;  but  Mrs.  Carter  found  it  a  much  better 
inn  than  any  she  had  seen  at  Dover.  Tn  a  day 
or  two  they  went  forward  on  their  travels.  Their 
cavalcade  (for  it  was  no  less)  consisted  of  my  lord's 
coach,  a  vis-d-vis,  a  post-chaise,  and  a  chasse-marine 
[chaise-marine  ?] l  with  ten  or  twelve  outriders.  As 
Mrs.  Carter's  page,  or  special  body-guard,  Lord 
Bath  had  provided  a  lively  '  little  French  boy  with 
an  English  face  '.  He  had  also,  apparently,  a  dash 
of  English  humour,  since  he  was  '  excessively  enter- 
tained '  when  the  ladies  from  England  were  de- 
murely told  by  the  nuns  of  Lille  that  they  could 
only  inspect  the  inside  of  the  convent  by  staying 
there  altogether  ('  Pas  sans  y  rester,  au  moins  '), 
a  reply  which  reminds  one  of  that  given  by  the 
authorities  at  Madrid  to  John  Howard  when  he 
proposed  to  explore  the  penetralia  of  the  Spanish 
Inquisition. 

Mrs.  Carter  was  at  first  much  impressed  by  the 

1  Defined  in  The  Stanford  Dictionary  as  '  a  light  vehicle 
slung  on  springs  ',  and  further  described  by  Lady  Morgan 
as  '  covered  with  a  canvas  awning  '. 


'  THE  LEARNED  MRS.  CARTER  '       113 

politesse,  the  empressetnent  pour  vous  servir,  which 
she  experienced  from  our  French  neighbours  ;  and 
particularly  from  a  vivacious  perruquier  at  the  inn, 
'  with  a  most  magnificent  queue  ',  who  was  called  in 
to  minister  to  the  '  honours  of  her  head  '.  But  she 
had  come  from  Dover  with  all  the  anti-Gallic  pre- 
judices engendered  by  the  wearisome  Seven  Years' 
War,  and  she  speedily  found  a  great  deal  that  was 
less  to  her  taste.  With  Hogarth — and  almost  in 
Hogarth's  words — she  was  struck  by  the  mixture 
of  pride  and  poverty,  of  '  rags  and  dirt  and  finery  ' 
— matters  which  were  not  materially  modified  by 
the  occasional  spectacle  of  clean  towns,  good  roads, 
and  well-cultivated  fields.  As  a  strict  Church- 
woman,  she  was  scandalized  by  the  evidences  of 
credulity  and  superstition.  The  tinsel  and  colifichets 
of  the  altar  decorations  ;  the  empty  formality  of 
the  offices  mumbled  ignorantly  by  the  worshippers  ; 
the  triviality  and  even  profanity  of  the  sacred 
pictures  ;  the  manifestly  mendacious  stories  of 
saints  and  miracles — all  these  things  were  natur- 
ally distasteful  to  the  correspondent  of  an  English 
bishop.  At  Lille,  the  grim  fortifications  prompt 
in  the  chronicler  a  pious  gratitude  that  her  own 
native  land  is  a  country  '  guarded  by  the  Ocean 
and  by  Liberty  '.  From  Lille  they  fare  to  Ghent. 
At  Courtrai  they  encounter  a  procession  of  the  Host 
and  see  the  people  falling  on  their  knees  in  the  road 
as  depicted  by  Hogarth.  Thence  they  go  on  to 
Brussels,  which  they  find  extremely  unattractive 
with  its  high  houses,  narrow  streets,  and  dismal- 
looking  canal.  From  Brussels  their  progress  to 
Liege  is  diversified  by  sundry  misadventures  and 
breakdowns  arising  from  the  rope-harness  and  make- 
shift travelling  tackle  obtaining  in  the  dominions  of 
Maria-Theresa.  Liege  they  vote  detestable  ;  and 

I 


114  LATER  ESSAYS 

its  inhabitants  '  of  a  disagreeable  countenance  '. 
At  last,  after  a  formidable  twenty-one-mile  drive 
of  fifteen  hours  along  a  mountainous  road,  they 
reach  their  destination — the  primitive  Spa  of 
1763. 

It  was  the  middle  of  June.  The  Spa  season  was 
beginning,  and  the  earliest  visitors  were  arriving. 
These  were  mostly  English  and  Germans,  though 
there  were  also  some  French  and  Dutch.  From 
Mrs.  Carter's  own  nation  she  noted  only  Lord  and 
Lady  Robert  Bertie ;  and  later,  that  fantastic 
personage,  the  Duke  of  Argyll's  daughter,  Lady 
Mary  Coke.  As  a  matter  of  convenience,  Lord 
Bath's  party  were  lodged  in  different  buildings  ; 
but  they  dined  every  day  Avith  his  lordship.  Their 
accommodation  must  have  been  rudimentary,  as  we 
hear  of  '  whitewashed  walls,  and  floors  the  colour  of 
dirt  '.  In  spite  of  continuous  rain,  they  at  once 
proceeded  to  sample  the  waters  of  the  two  chief 
springs,  the  Pouhon  and  the  remoter  Geronstere, 
only  to  find  them  very  similar  to  those  they  had 
left  behind  at  Tunbridge  Wells,  even  to  producing 
the  same  '  confusion  of  head  '  which  had  afflicted 
the  excellent  Mr.  Samuel  Richardson.  They  were 
promptly  invited  to  dine  with  one  of  the  first  new- 
comers, the  Prince-Bishop  of  Augsburg,  an  amiable 
and  courtly  ecclesiastic,  whose  appearance  must 
have  been  anything  but  episcopal,  since,  after  the 
fashion  of  Goldsmith  (and  the  orchestra  at  Vaux- 
hall),  he  wore  '  a  blossom-coloured  coat  '.  This, 
however,  cannot  have  been  uncommon,  as  another 
prelate  (of  twenty),  Prince  Clement  of  Saxony,  who 
already  held  two  bishoprics  and  was  actually  a 
candidate  for  a  third,  was  attired  in  '  orange  '. 
But  then — to  be  sure — he  was  youngest  son  of  the 
King  of  Poland  !  The  Prince-Bishop's  entertain- 


'  THE  LEAK  NED  MRS.  CARTER  '       115 

ments  were  not  stimulating,  and  terribly  formal — 
'  more  an  honour  than  a  pleasure  ',  Mrs.  Carter  calls 
them  ;  and  the  tedium  was  increased  by  the  fact 
that  all  the  attendants  were  persons  of  quality,  and 
one  must  either  choke  with  thirst  or  employ  a  Count 
or  Baron  to  bring  a  glass  of  water. 

This  rigorous  routine  was  necessarily  highly  dis- 
concerting to  the  quiet  recluse  of  the  Kentish 
seaport,  who  would  obviously  have  preferred  the 
conversational  sans-gene  of  a  literary  breakfast  to 
all  the  decorations  in  the  Almanack  de  Gotha. 
Luckily,  from  most  of  the  functions  and  assemblies 
she  was  excused  by  her  constitutional  headaches, 
and  from  others,  by  the  absence  of  the  hoop  de 
rigueur  with  which  she  had  not  come  provided.  For 
the  community  of  water-drinkers,  they  were  friendly 
and  sociable  enough  ;  but  as  mixed  as  at  the  Bath 
Pump  Room.  In  the  walks  of  the  Geronstere,  the 
variety  of  costume  was  exceedingly  amusing. 
'  Priests  and  Hussars,  Beaux  and  Hermits,  Nuns 
and  fine  ladies,  stars  and  crosses,  cowls  and  ribbons, 
all  blended  together  in  the  most  lively  and  pic- 
turesque manner  imaginable.' l  Mrs.  Montagu 
called  the  place  '  The  Seven  Dials  of  Europe  '- 
which  sounds  more  brilliant  than  it  is.  Every  one 
spoke  French,  including  the  Germans,  who,  indeed, 
following  the  lead  of  the  illustrious  Philosopher  of 
Sans-Souci,  professed  to  prefer  that  tongue  to  their 
own  mellifluous  medium.2  It  is  depressing  to  learn 
that  Mrs.  Carter  seems,  on  the  whole,  to  have  liked 

1  Memoirs,  1825,  i.  306. 

4  Mrs.  Carter  gives  an  extraordinary  illustration  of  this. 
She  met  a  German  lady  who  was  familiar  with  Gessner's 
Death  of  Abel,  but  only  in  a  French  version.  When 
Mrs.  Carter  expressed  surprise,  the  lady  explained  that  she 
did  not  understand  her  own  language  well  enough  to  read 
the  original.  (Ibid.,  p.  822.) 
12 


116  LATER  ESSAYS 

the  Teutons  better  than  the  other  nationalities  ; 
and  although  she  laughed  at  their  preposterously 
stiff  state-costume,  which  reminded  her  of  '  King 
Pharaoh's  court  in  a  puppet-show  ',  she  found  them 
unaffected  and  agreeable,  and  her  highest  com- 
mendations are  reserved  for  those  whom  Hannah 
More  afterwards  discovered  to  be  '  desolating  Huns  '. 
Especially  was  she  attracted  by  some  of  their  '  emi- 
nences '  ;  and  in  particular,  to  that  distinguished 
soldier,  Charles  William  Ferdinand,  Duke  of 
Brunswick-Wolfenbuttel,  who  afterwards  married 
George  Ill's  sister,  Princess  Augusta,  and  thus 
became  the  father  of  the  ill-fated  Caroline,  whose 
tragedy  it  was  to  endure  the  tender  mercies  of  the 
so-called  '  First  Gentleman  in  Europe  '.  Known  at 
this  date  as  the  Hereditary  Prince  of  Brunswick, 
the  Duke  was  a  young  man  of  eight  and  twenty  ; 
and  Mrs.  Carter  (a  staunch  Hanoverian)  was  greatly 
impressed  by  his  natural  politeness,  good  sense,  and 
4  culture  '  (old  style  !).  She  also  discovered  an  ador- 
able chanoinesse — she  appears  to  have  had  a  taste 
for  chanoinesses,  with  their  blue  ribbons  and  garnet 
crosses — whose  name  was  Mme  de  Blum,  with 
whom  she  struck  up  a  lasting  friendship. 

But  one  may  make  too  much  of  an  episode,  even 
though  it  should  chance  to  be  the  solitary  important 
event  in  an  otherwise  colourless  career.  In  August 
the  Spa  visit,  with  its  tiresome  balls  and  its  assem- 
blies, its  endless  buckram  and  bowing,  its  three- 
penny whist  and  penny  quadrille  (to  say  nothing 
of  heavier  stakes),  came  to  an  end  ;  and  the  party 
set  out  by  the  Rhine  and  Holland  to  return  to 
England.  Upon  their  further  impressions  de  voyage 
it  is  unnecessary  to  linger.  That  they  should  have 
visited  the  Tomb  of  Charlemagne  at  Aix-la-Chapelle, 
the  Church  of  the  Ursulines  at  Cologne,  and  the 


'  THE  LEARNED  MRS.  CARTER  '       117 

Prince  of  Orange's  House  in  the  Wood  at  The  Hague, 
goes  without  saying,  for  these  are  the  standing 
dishes  of  Baedeker  and  Murray.  But  it  illustrates 
the  practical  side  of  Mrs.  Carter's  character  that  she 
shows  no  bibliographical  enthusiasm  for  Mr.  Fagel's 
famous  library  at  the  last-named  town.  '  I  have  no 
idea  of  merely  reading  the  titles  of  books,  and 
being  convinced  they  are  good  editions  and  well 
bound.'  '  I  have  no  great  pleasure  ',  she  says  again, 
'  in  the  mere  sight  of  books  unless  one  can  sit  down 
quietly  and  read  them.'  x  On  September  19  they 
left  Calais.  At  Dover,  next  day,  Mrs.  Carter  bade 
farewell  to  her  friends,  and  set  off  in  a  post-chaise 
for  Deal,  nothing  loath  to  return  to  her  old  habit 
of  life.  It  may,  indeed,  be  questioned  whether  her 
tour  into  foreign  parts  really  effected  much  beyond 
enlarging  her  experience.  The  rain  had  been  per- 
petual ;  the  fatigue  of  travel  excessive  ;  she  had 
suffered  much  from  inability  to  take  her  accustomed 
walking  exercise,  and  her  constitutional  ailments 
had  often  debarred  her  from  sharing  in  the  expedi- 
tions and  entertainments  which  engrossed  her  com- 
panions. '  Ever  since  I  left  England  ',  she  tells 
Mrs.  Vesey  from  The  Hague,  '  my  head  has  been  at 
least  equally  bad,  and  my  nerves  worse  than  for 
some  years  :  so  far  were  the  Spa  waters  from  doing 
them  any  good.'  2  Such  things  must  have  sorely 
tried  both  her  placid  temper  and  her  stoic  serenity  ; 
and,  in  these  respects,  she  was  superficially  more 
unfortunate  than  her  friends.  '  My  Lord  Bath  and 
Mrs.  Montagu  are  surprisingly  the  better  for  their 
excursion,  indeed  they  are  much  the  youngest  and 
healthiest  of  our  whole  party.'  2  This,  as  regards 
Lord  Bath,  is  obviously  playful,  since  he  was  eighty- 

1  Memoirs,  i.  344,  358.  2  Ibid.,  p.  362. 


118  LATER  ESSAYS 

one,  and  died  in  the  following  year.  As  a  matter 
of  fact,  Mrs.  Carter,  who  had  still  forty-four  years 
before  her,  survived  them  both.  She  was  therefore 
right  in  speaking  of  her  disabilities  as  '  good  long- 
lived  distempers  '.  But  though,  except  in  1782, 
she  never  again  went  abroad,  the  story  of  her 
Continental  tour  was  one  to  which  she  was  accus- 
tomed in  after  days  to  refer  with  peculiar  satisfac- 
tion, and  she  was  untiring  in  recalling  its  moving 
accidents. 

At  this  point  the  candid  chronicler  must  confess 
that  Mrs.  Carter's  never  very  vive  odyssee  grows 
singularly  barren  ;  and  although  she  lived  into  the 
nineteenth  century,  only  brief  space  is  required  for 
the  remainder  of  the  '  life  that  has  no  story  '.  With 
the  money  obtained  for  her  translation,  she  had 
bought  certain  tenements  at  Deal,  which,  during 
her  absence  on  the  Continent,  had  been  consolidated 
into  the  house  where  henceforth  she  lived.  It  is 
later  described  as  an  ivy-clad  building,  situated 
delightfully  at  the  northern  extremity  of  the  town, 
and  commanding  a  view  both  of  the  country  and 
the  sea.  The  rest  of  the  family  were  now  out  in 
the  world.  She  let  the  house  to  her  father  ;  and 
here  for  several  years  they  lived  quietly.  Each  had 
his  or  her  separate  apartment  and  library  ;  and 
though  they  saw  each  other  rarely  except  at  meals, 
and  generally  conversed  in  Latin,  the  arrangement 
seems  to  have  wrorked  admirably.  For,  in  spite  of 
the  erudition  which  she  sedulously  nourished,  on 
the  old  lines,1  Mrs.  Carter  was  unremitting  in  her 

1  Being  a  rigorous  early  riser,  she  generally  began  before 
breakfast  with  Bible-reading,  a  sermon  by  Clarke  or  another, 
and  some  Hebrew,  Greek,  and  Latin.  After  breakfast,  she 
read  a  part  of  every  language  with  which  she  was  acquainted, 
k  so  that  she  never  allowed  herself  to  forget  what  she  had 


'  THE  LEARNED  MRS.  CARTER  '       119 

humbler  domestic  duties  ;  and  to  the  friends  who 
exhorted  her  to  undertake  fresh  versions  from  the 
'  Antients  ',  would  placidly  reply  that  she  had  '  a 
dozen  shirts  to  make  '.  This  very  matter-of-fact 
side  of  her  character  was  recognized  by  Johnson. 
'  My  old  friend,  Mrs.  Carter,'  said  he,  '  could  make 
a  pudding  as  well  as  translate  Epictetus  from  the 
Greek,  and  work  a  handkerchief  as  well  as  compose 
a  poem  '  ;  1  and  this  was  a  condition  of  things 
in  which  she  uncomplainingly  acquiesced  until,  in 
1774,  Dr.  Carter  died. 

There  were,  not  less,  even  during  this  time, 
occasional  '  solutions  of  continuity  '.  Every  winter 
she  migrated  for  some  weeks  to  London.  Many  of 
her  numerous  admirers  would  gladly  have  received 
her  as  a  guest.  But  she  preferred  to  take  lodgings 
with  her  maid  in  Clarges  Street,  Piccadilly,  to  which 
she  regularly  returned.  '  She  kept  no  table  in 
London  .  .  .  nor  ever  dined  at  home  but  when  she 
was  so  ill  as  to  be  unable  to  go  out.  The  chairs  or 
carriages  of  her  friends  always  brought  her  to 
dinner,  and  carried  her  back  at  ten  o'clock  at 
latest.'2  Her  periodical  journeys  from  Deal,  failing 
a  brother-in-law's  carriage,  were  generally  made  by 
the  common  stage,  which,  though  it  sometimes 
acquainted  her  with  strange  fellow  passengers,  never 
exposed  her  to  any  misadventures  of  the  road, 
beyond  being  '  jolted  black  and  blue  '.  But  this, 
even  as  an  octogenarian,  she  patiently  continued 
to  endure.  Her  practice  was  to  set  out  from  Deal 
by  moonlight  at  8  p.m.,  and  she  usually  reached 

once  known.'  It  is  further  recorded  that,  to  avoid  being 
tired,  she  hardly  ever  worked  for  more  than  half  an  hour  at 
a  time.  (Memoirs,  1825,  i.  139-40.) 

1  Hill's  Johnsonian  Miscellanies,  1897,  ii.  11. 

*  Memoirs,  1825,  i.  242. 


120  LATER  ESSAYS 

Glarges  Street  at  11  a.m.  next  day,  having  break- 
fasted at  Dartford.  This  she  thought  preferable  to 
'  drawling  through  two  days  and  sleeping  on  the 
road  '  ;  and  Miss  Gaussen  relates  that,  in  1801,  four 
years  before  her  death,  she  dined  at  Lord  Cre- 
morne's  on  the  very  evening  of  her  arrival  in 
town. 

As  a  resident  at  Deal  she  was  highly  respected  by 
the  townsfolk,  who  regarded  her  with  great  venera- 
tion as  a  person  of  almost  superhuman  attainments, 
especially  in  meteorology  ;  and  she  seems  to  have 
identified  herself  thoroughly  with  all  their  local 
hopes  and  fears,  without  insisting  too  strongly  on 
her  intellectual  superiority.  In  fact,  in  all  matters 
regarding  herself,  she  was  transparently  modest  and 
unobtrusive.  But,  in  London,  in  the  fitting  environ- 
ment of  the  congenial  bas-bleu  atmosphere — at  Mrs. 
Montagu's  great  mansion  in  Portman  Square,  or 
Mrs.  Vesey's  Tuesdays — at  Lady  Herries's  in  St. 
James's  Square  or  Mrs.  Hunter's  in  Leicester  Fields 
— she  was  naturally  in  what  she  herself  would  have 
described  as  son  assiette.  As  may  be  gathered  from 
her  verbal  portrait  at  the  beginning  of  this  paper, 
she  must  have  been  an  accomplished  talker  of 
the  best  type,  promoting  without  dominating  the 
'  stream  of  conversation  ',  sympathetically  atten- 
tive, responsive,  and  informing.  She  dealt,  one 
would  imagine,  little  with  people,  but  much  with 
books  and  things — '  things  that  mattered  '  in  par- 
ticular. '  Her  talk  was  all  instruction  ' — says  Fanny 
Burney  in  1784.1  She  spoke  frankly  about  writers 
of  whom  she  disapproved — Voltaire,  Rousseau, 
Hume,  for  example — but  without  heat  or  bitterness. 
She  was  even  indulgent  to  those  frailties  which 
might  be  ascribed  to  variable  health,  as  in  the  case 
1  Diary,  1904,  ii.  240. 


'  THE  LEARNED  MRS.  CARTER  '       121 

of  Pope  and  Johnson  ;  and  she  was  more  just  to 
Fielding's  powers  than  was  Gray.  She  respected 
Richardson ;  but  found  his  prolixity  tiresome, 
besides  doubting  his  knowledge  of  male  humanity ; 
and  she  freely  criticized  the  weak  spots  in  Gold- 
smith's personages  when  they  seemed  more  invented 
than  observed.  Her  favourite  authors,  as  might  be 
anticipated,  were  of  her  own  sex ;  and  she  was 
a  warm  adherent  of  Mrs.  Radcliffe,  Miss  Burney, 
and  Miss  Joanna  Baillie.  Of  Mrs.  Montagu's  Essay 
on  Shakespeare  she  was,  of  course,  appreciative  ; 
but  she  regretted  her  friend  had  not  exerted  her 
powers  on  some  '  work  of  more  general  utility  '. 
The  impression  produced  by  her  '  scattered  sapience  ' 
is  that  she  must  have  been  an  exceedingly  straight- 
forward, tolerant,  and  well-equipped  critic ;  and 
that  Johnson  was  right  when  he  said,  after  dining 
at  Mrs.  Garrick's  with  Elizabeth  Carter,  Fanny 
Burney,  and  Hannah  More,  that  '  three  such  women 
were  not  to  be  found  '-1  It  is  true,  after  his  fashion, 
he  presently  discounted  his  heroics  by  adding 
Mrs.  Lenox  to  the  trio  as  '  superior  to  them  all  ', 
and  by  commending  Mrs.  Montagu's  conversation 
as  being  '  always  impregnated  '  with  meaning.  In 
the  blue-stocking  Salon  of  those  days  you  met 
everybody  of  any  intellectual  standing.  Burke  and 
Johnson,  Reynolds  and  Garrick,  Lyttelton  and 
Beattie,  Horace  Walpole  and  Lord  Monboddo — 
these,  with  many  another,  were  all  to  be  seen  and 
listened  to  for  nothing.  It  was  not,  as  sometimes 
supposed,  an  exclusive  Spouters'  Club  or  a  Mutual 
Admiration  Society,  but  a  thoroughly  informal 
gathering,  easy  of  access  to  any  person  of  character, 
and  its  rules  were  unconventional.  There  was 
neither  the  temptation  of  cards  nor  the  solace  of 
Hill's  Boswell,  1887,  iv.  275. 


122  LATER  ESSAYS 

supper  ;  neither  the  hubbub  of  a  '  Hurricane  '  nor 
the  crowd  of  a  '  Rout  '.  But  you  heard  the  best 
'  impregnated  '  conversation  in  the  world  by  the  best 
talkers.  And  one  of  the  best  talkers  was  undoubtedly 
Elizabeth  Carter. 

There  is  little  else  to  tell,  biographically,  of  our 
'  learned  '  lady.  The  deaths  of  Archbishop  Seeker, 
Miss  Talbot,  and  Lord  Lyttelton  had  already  pre- 
ceded the  death  of  her  father  ;  and  after  this  had 
happened,  she  gradually  lost  other  members  of  her 
more  intimate  circle.  Mrs.  Vesey  followed  Dr. 
Carter  in  1791,  and  Mrs.  Montagu  in  1801.  With 
the  two  latter  Mrs.  Carter  maintained  a  copious 
correspondence  which  has  all  the  more  solid  charac- 
teristics attached  to  her  spoken  words.  Literature 
she  practically  abandoned,  only  adding  a  few  poems 
to  her  collection  of  1762,  and  editing  Miss  Talbot's 
remains.  She  seems,  indeed,  to  have  had  slender 
literary  ambition  ;  or  rather,  her  bias  was  more  in 
the  direction  of  acquiring  than  diffusing.  To  employ 
Mr.  Gladstone's  figure,  her  imports  exceeded  her 
exports.  She  was,  besides,  too  late  for  the  new 
novel  as  practised  by  the  author  of  Evelina  ;  and 
play-writing  was  probably  against  her  principles  ; 
although  her  position  as  a  social  spectator  should 
have  furnished  her  with  material  for  either  field. 
And  if  she  was  not  stirred  by  the  aspirations  of 
literature,  neither  was  she  forced  to  them  by 
necessity.  The  profits  of  her  translation,  together 
with  an  opportune  legacy  from  a  London  relative, 
and  pensions  from  the  Pulteney  family  and  Mrs. 
Montagu,  fully  sufficed  for  her  modest  charities  and 
her  moderate  wants  ;  and  her  posthumous  works 
consist  solely  of  Biblical  studies.  She  was  never 
married.  One  of  the  last  incidents  of  her  life  was 
her  introduction  by  Lady  Cremorne  to  Queen 


'  THE  LEARNED  MRS.  CARTER  '       123 

Charlotte,  who  received  her  with  great  affability. 
Her  honourable  and  contented  life  was  prolonged 
until  February  1806,  when  she  died  in  her  Clarges 
Street  lodgings  on  her  final  visit  to  town.  She  lies 
in  the  Grosvenor  Chapel  burial-ground,  where  her 
epitaph  describes  her  as  being  '  a  lady  as  much 
distinguished  for  piety  and  virtue,  as  for  deep 
learning,  and  extensive  knowledge  '. 


THE   ABB6  EDGEWORTH 

BIOGRAPHY  is  deservedly  a  popular  form  of  litera- 
ture. Yet  it  has  its  limitations  ;  and  the  writer 
who  light-heartedly  sets  out  upon  his  task,  fore- 
seeing only  a  pleasant  progress  through  a  smiling 
landscape,  runs  the  risk  of  being  wofully  disap- 
pointed. He  must  be  prepared  for  long  and  dusty 
by-ways,  stretches  of  unexpected  sterility,  bleak 
corners  where  only  a  Carlyle  could  built  a  Craigen- 
puttock.  Take,  for  instance,  the  case  of  John 
Howard,  already  discussed  in  these  pages.  He  had 
completed  many  apparently  infructuous  years 
before  he  began  the  period  of  his  fevered  philan- 
thropic activities.  With  '  the  learned  Mrs.  Carter  ' — 
of  whom  there  has  also  been  discourse — the  position 
was  reversed.  Her  mission  was  accomplished  in 
the  first  half  of  her  life,  and  of  her  protracted  later 
career  there  is  nothing  absorbing  to  record.  Such 
vacant  intervals  may,  of  course,  be  often  accounted 
for  by  the  inevitable  silences  of  unconscious  proba- 
tion, or  the  not-unwelcome  repose  of  achieved 
endeavour.  But  they  must  be  faced  by  the  life- 
maker  ;  and  unless,  with  Swift's  Afric  geographers, 
he  can 

o'er  unhabitable  downs 
Place  elephants  for  want  of  towns, 

he  will  do  well  to  confess  his  disabilities,  and  say 
frankly  that  there  is  nothing  to  be  said. 

These  considerations  apply  generally  to  many  of 
the  dramatis  personae  in  the  great  tragedy  of  the 
French  Revolution,  and  they  are  particularly 
applicable  to  the  Irish  ecclesiastic  whose  name 


THE  ABBE  EDGEWORTH  125 

figures  at  the  head  of  this  essay.  The  Abbe  Edge 
worth — or,  as  he  was  called  in  France,  the  Abbe 
Edgeworth  de  Firmont * — had,  like  Howard,  reached 
the  mature  age  of  four-and-forty  before  his  life 
becomes  biographically  attractive.  That  life  has, 
of  late  years,  been  written  at  large,2  but  its  salient 
features  are  undoubtedly  his  relations  with  the 
royal  family  of  France  and  his  presence  on  the 
scaffold  of  Louis  XVI.  Physically  frail,  but  mor- 
ally courageous,  unambitious,  and  unobtrusive — the 
story  of  his  colourless  doings  presents  little  memor- 
able save  his  connexion  with  the  Bourbons,  and  to 
this  mainly  we  propose  to  confine  our  present 
inquiries. 

Born  in  1745  at  Edgeworthstown,  a  place  founded 
by  the  Edgeworth  family  in  the  sixteenth  century, 
Henry  Essex  Edgeworth  was  the  second  son  of 
the  Rev.  Robert  Edgeworth,  Protestant  Rector  of 
Edgeworthstown,  who  married  a  grand-daughter 
of  Archbishop  Ussher  of  the  Chronology,  by  whom 
he  had  four  children — Robert,  Henry  aforesaid, 
Ussher,  and  a  daughter,  Betty.  In  1748,  when 

1  From   '  Firmount ',   the   family   property,   three   miles 
north  of  Edgeworthstown  in  Co.  Longford,  Ireland. 

2  The  Abbe  Edgeworth  and  his  Friends,  byMiss  Violette  M. 
Montagu  (1913).    We  have  availed  ourselves  of  such  of  the 
facts  of  Edgeworth's  career,  recorded  in  this  volume,  as 
come  within  our  scope  ;   but  we  have  also  drawn  freely  on 
the  valuable  collection  of  Recits  originaux  and  Documents 
ojfficiels  brought  together  by  the  Marquis  de  Beaucourt  for 
the  Societe  d'Histoire  Contemporaine,  under  the  title  of 
Captivite  et  Derniers  Moments  de  Louis  XVI,  2  vols.  (1892). 
These  include  the  very  interesting  account  written  down  in 
1796  by  Bertrand  de  Moleville,  after  repeated  conversations 
with  the  Abbe  in  London  on  the  subject  of  his  intercourse 
with  the  King — a  document  which  supplies  (in  the  Marquis  de 
Beaucourt's  opinion)  decisive  confirmation  of  Edgeworth's 
own  narrative,  prepared  for  the  information  of  his  brother, 
Ussher  Edgeworth. 


126  LATER  ESSAYS 

Henry  was  three  years  old,  Edgeworth  pere,  to  the 
great  dissatisfaction  of  his  Protestant  relatives, 
became  a  Roman  Catholic  ;  and,  in  consequence, 
migrated  to  Toulouse,  leaving  only  his  youngest 
son,  Ussher,  behind  him  in  Ireland.  At  Toulouse 
Robert  and  Henry  were  educated,  and  here  the 
future  Abbe  made  a  lifelong  friend  of  a  student 
compatriot,  John  Moylan,  afterwards  Roman 
Catholic  Bishop  of  Cork.  By  Moylan's  advice, 
Henry  Edgeworth  passed  to  Paris,  where,  from  the 
College  of  the  Trente-Trois,  he  attended  lectures 
at  the  Sorbonne  and  the  College  de  Navarre.  When 
his  education  was  finished  he  took  orders,  and  went 
into  residence  at  the  Seminaire  des  Missions  etran- 
geres  in  the  Rue  du  Bac,  an  institution  for  the  educa- 
tion of  Roman  Catholic  missionaries  which  dated 
from  1663.  His  first  intention  was  the  mission- 
field  ;  but  from  this  he  was  dissuaded  ;  and  thence- 
forth confined  himself  to  his  work  in  Paris,  which 
lay  chiefly  among  the  English  and  Irish  poor  in 
his  neighbourhood. 

In  1766  his  friend  Moylan  moved  from  Toulouse 
to  Ireland.  Moylan  strove  vainly  to  induce  Edge- 
worth  to  accompany  him,  but  with  long  residence 
in  France  the  latter  had  lost  touch  with  his  native 
land  ;  and  although  Moylan  went  as  far  as  to  ask 
the  Pope's  permission  to  carry  his  fellow  student 
back  with  him,  he  could  not  induce  him  to  undertake 
the  duties  of  an  Irish  rural  priest.  Three  years 
later,  in  1769,  the  elder  Edgeworth  died  ;  and  his 
widow,  with  her  daughter  Betty  and  her  sons 
Robert  and  Ussher — the  second  of  whom  had  by 
this  date  joined  the  family  in  France — went  back 
to  Ireland.  But  her  Protestant  relatives  proved 
so  unfriendly  that,  promptly  selling  her  property, 
she  returned  to  France  with  her  daughter.  They 


127 

took  up  their  abode  with  the  Franciscan  nuns  in 
the  Couvent  des  Recollets,  not  far  from  the  Rue 
du  Bac,  and,  consequently,  in  convenient  proximity 
to  the  Abbe. 

And  here  comes  one  of  those  seemingly  barren 
biographical  spaces  to  which  reference  has  been 
made.  From  1766  to  1789  the  Abbe,  like  Gold- 
smith's village  preacher,  *  more  skill'd  to  raise 
the  wretched  than  to  rise  '• — contented  himself  with 
his  modest  ministerial  duties.  For  this  he  is  his 
own  authority.  Writing  to  Moylan  in  July  1788, 
twenty-two  years  after  the  latter  had  left  France, 
he  says  expressly  that  his  position  was  precisely 
the  same  as  it  had  been  of  old.  Living  in  the  same 
room  in  the  same  house,  coming  home  at  the  same 
hours,  he  knew  nobody  whose  life  had  changed 
less  than  his  had  done — an  admission  which  should 
certainly  have  entitled  him  to  all  the  advantages 
involved  in  Pascal's  quietist  doctrine  that  tout  le 
malheur  des  hommes  vient  de  ne  sf avoir  pas  se  tenir 
en  repos  dans  une  chambre.  Opportunities  of 
advancement  had  not  been  lacking  ;  but  his  health 
was  poor,  and  more  than  one  illness  fully  justi- 
fied him  in  speaking  of  his  feeble  constitution. 
Self-seeking,  moreover,  was  foreign  to  his  unpre- 
tentious disposition.  Of  public  matters  his  letter 
says  nothing  ;  but  there  is  a  warning  under-note 
in  his  closing  lines.  Though  everything  seemed  quiet, 
he  was  fully  aware  that  the  conflict  had  begun,  and 
that  the  issue  was  uncertain. 

Twelve  months  later,  on  July  14,  1789,  the  taking 
of  the  Bastille  inaugurated  the  atrocities  which 
only  terminated  with  the  Terror.  The  nobility 
and  the  clergy  were  fleeing  the  country,  and  the 
King's  second  brother,  the  Count  d'Artois,  had 
already  taken  his  inglorious  departure.  At  this 


128  LATER  ESSAYS 

juncture  Edgeworth  received  a  pressing  invitation 
from  his  aunt,  Miss  Ussher  of  Gal  way  (Mrs.  Edge- 
worth's  sister  and  a  Roman  Catholic),  to  come  to 
Ireland  as  her  chaplain.  To  this,  however,  as  to 
another  urgent  appeal  from  his  brothers,  two  years 
later,  he  turned  a  deaf  ear.  As  already  stated,  he, 
rightly  or  wrongly,  regarded  himself  as  disqualified 
for  service  in  Ireland,  and  held  that  his  duty  and 
destiny  lay  in  France.  There  were,  possibly,  other 
reasons  which  led  him  to  brave  the  storm.  He  was, 
naturally,  not  attracted  to  his  Protestant  relatives  ; 
nor,  looking  to  their  recent  experiences,  were  his 
mother  and  sister,  who  wished  to  be  near  him  at 
Paris.  And  in  addition  to  his  little  flock,  who  were 
devoted  to  their  pastor,  he  had  become  father- 
confessor  to  one  or  two  court  ladies,  by  whom  he 
was  held  in  high  esteem.  This  it  was  that  directly 
led  to  his  connexion  with  the  royal  family  of  France. 
The  sister  of  Louis  XVI,  the  pious  and  amiable 
Princess  Elizabeth,  had  lost  her  confessor,  the  Abbe 
Madier,  who  had  gone  to  Italy  with  the  King's 
aunts,  Mesdames  Adelaide  and  Victoire.  For 
a  substitute  the  Princess  applied  to  the  Seminaire 
in  the  Rue  du  Bac,  and,  with  the  ready  acquiescence 
of  his  clerical  superior,  Edgeworth  was  at  once 
nominated  to  the  post. 

The  Princess  was  delighted  with  her  new  spiritual 
guide.  She  had  been  assured  that  he  was  '  neither 
too  severe  nor  too  lenient  '.  She  is  '  quite  content 
with  him  ',  she  writes  in  March  1791.  He  '  possesses 
a  profound  knowledge  of  human  nature  '.  Later  on 
she  speaks  of  him  as  '  a  well-educated,  broad- 
minded,  gentle  but  firm  director,  who  already 
knows  me  better  than  I  know" myself  and  will  allow 
no  backsliding  '.  In  August  of  the  same  year, 
after  the  ill-planned  and  ill-fated  flight  to  Varennes, 


THE  ABBF,  EDGEWORTH  129 

she  is  still  of  the  same  opinion.  '  If  I  do  not  make 
any  progress  I  shall  know  who  is  to  blame,'  she  says. 
'  I  have  just  had  a  long  conversation  with  the  Abbe,' 
in  whom,  beyond  the  qualities  already  enumerated, 
she  discovers  '  an  engaging  manner  which  invites 
confidence  '  and  '  a  very  lovable  disposition,  which 
makes  one  long  to  imitate  him  '.  She  cannot  look 
forward  to  the  day  when  they  must  part — a  remark 
implying  that,  as  Miss  Montagu  suggests,  notwith- 
standing the  Varennes  fiasco,  she  was  still  cherishing 
the  vain  hope  of  escaping  from  France.  She  trusts, 
however,  '  that  Providence,  who  has  never  aban- 
doned me,  will  temper  the  wind  to  the  shorn  lamb  V 

It  would  have  been  interesting  to  contrast  this 
'  roughly  drawn  '  portrait,  as  its  writer  calls  it,  with 
some  corresponding  account  on  the  Abbe's  part  of 
his  illustrious  penitent.  This,  however,  is  not 
forthcoming.  From  the  flight  to  Varennes  to  the 
incarceration  of  the  royal  family  in  the  Tuileries, 
either  from  caution  or  necessity,  Edge  worth's 
letters  are  few  and  far  between.  But  during  their 
residence  in  the  Tuileries  he  seems  to  have  enjoyed 
an  exceptional  immunity  from  molestation.  He 
was,  indeed,  cautioned  to  be  careful  in  visiting  the 
palace,  but  he  went  twice  or  thrice  a  week  fearlessly 
in  and  out  without  the  slightest  attempt  at  secrecy 
or  disguise — a  temerity  at  which  he  himself  was 
afterwards  astonished,  and  could  only  attribute 
it  to  his  ignorance  of  the  risk  he  ran.  As  a  matter 
of  fact,  he  was  literally  taking  his  life  in  his  hand. 

On  Monday,  August  13,  1792,  the  King,  his  wife, 

1  Although  the  royal  family  of  France  were  familiar  with 
translations  of  the  English  Classics,  it  is  not  necessary  to 
suppose  that  the  princess  was  quoting  from  Sterne's  Maria 
of  Moulines.  She  had  probably  in  mind  Henri  Estienne  of 
the  Premices,  1594. 

K 


130  LATER  ESSAYS 

his  sister,  and  his  son  and  daughter  entered  the 
Temple  as  prisoners  ;  and  in  the  same  month  the 
Abbe's  retreat  in  the  Rue  du  Bac  was  suddenly 
subjected  to  a  nocturnal  domiciliary  visit,  of  which  he 
personally  does  not  seem  to  have  been  the  direct 
object.  But  his  papers  were  hastily  examined — a 
course  highly  critical,  as  he  had  many  compromising 
letters,  though  they  either  escaped  notice  or  were 
unintelligible  to  their  ignorant  inquisitors.  One  of 
his  friends  in  the  same  building  was  not  equally 
fortunate.  A  suspicious  missive  from  Germany 
having  been  found  in  his  possession,  he  was  promptly 
carried  to  prison,  where  in  brief  space  he  was 
massacred  by  the  Septembriseurs.  This  inroad 
made  it  clear  that  the  Rue  du  Bac  was  no  longer  an 
asylum,  and  the  Abbe  set  about  the  wholesale 
destruction  of  his  records.  Before  his  task  was 
completed  he  was  again  invaded  in  force.  Some 
hundred  revolutionists  appeared  about  midday  and 
began  a  systematic,  but  fruitless,  search  for  docu- 
ments, though  he  was  afterwards  dismayed  to  find 
that  they  had  actually  handled,  and  thrown  aside 
as  negligible,  an  overlooked  letter  from  the  Count 
de  Provence,  who  had  quitted  France  on  the  night 
of  Varennes.  A  later  rumour,  that  the  mob  were 
meditating  an  attack  on  the  Seminaire  itself,  left 
its  inmates  no  choice  but  flight ;  and  Edgeworth, 
in  disguise,  by  back  streets  and  devious  ways, 
succeeded  in  reaching  the  Recollets,  where,  favoured 
by  circumstances,  he  lay  for  several  weeks  in  hiding. 
With  the  massacres  of  September  1792  we  come 
within  measurable  distance  of  the  most  important 
event  in  Edgeworth's  life— namely,  his  final  minis- 
trations to  Louis  XVI,  whose  execution  took  place 
in  January  1793.  After  leaving  the  Recollets  the 
Abbe  retired  to  Choisy-le-Roi,  three  leagues  south 


THE  ABBE  EDGEWORTH  181 

of  Paris,  on  the  left  bank  of  the  Seine.  Here,  under 
the  name  of  Edgeworth,  he  passed  successfully  for 
a  harmless  and  benevolent  Englishman  in  reduced 
circumstances  ;  but  it  is  quite  clear  that  he  still 
communicated  with  Madame  Elizabeth.1  While  at 
Choisy,  shortly  before  Christmas,  he  received  a 
mandate  from  the  Archbishop  of  Paris,  Mgr  de 
Juigne,  then  an  emigre,  to  take  charge  of  the  dio- 
cese during  his  absence.  He  was  preparing  to 
enter  upon  this  vicarious  and  truly  hazardous  office 
when  he  was  suddenly  summoned  to  an  interview 
with  the  venerable  Lamoignon  de  Malesherbes,  the 
King's  counsel,  hitherto  unknown  to  him,  who 
placed  in  his  hands  a  letter  from  Louis  XVI  begging 
him,  should  the  sentence  of  death  be  carried  into 
effect,  to  give  him  his  assistance  in  his  last  hours — 
a  proposal  to  which  Edgeworth  of  course  assented. 
After  some  days'  delay,  on  Sunday,  January  20, 
at  about  four  o'clock  in  the  afternoon,  Edgeworth 
received  a  peremptory  order  to  attend  before  the 
Executive  Council.  Henceforth  the  story  rests 
mainly  on  the  first-hand  narratives  of  Clery,  the 
King's  valet  at  the  Temple,2  and  that  of  Edgeworth 
himself,  as  written  down  for  the  benefit  of  his 
brother  Ussher.3  The  Abbe  was  at  once  taken  to 
the  Tuileries,  where  the  Council  were  in  session. 
He  found  them  in  consternation.  They  eagerly 
clustered  about  him  ;  and  Garat,  the  Minister  of 

1  Sneyd  Edgeworth's  Memoirs,  1815,  pp.  112,  118. 

*  Journal,  <&c.,  de  Clery,  London,  1798. 

3  There  are  versions  of  this  in  Sneyd  Edgeworth's  Memoirs 
(1815)  in  French  and  English  ;  and  there  is  a  transcript  of 
the  French  version  by  the  Marquis  de  Sy  in  the  MSS.  Depart- 
ment of  the  British  Museum  to  which  it  was  presented  in 
1814.  Our  summary  of  this  detailed  document  is  based  on 
Clery,  Edgeworth,  Beaucourt,  and  Moleville,  with  some 
explanatory  additions  from  other  sources. 

K  2 


132  LATER  ESSAYS 

Justice  and,  for  the  time  being,  President  of  the 
Council,  forthwith  inquired  whether  he  was  prepared 
to  undertake  what  was  demanded  of  him.  Edge- 
worth  answered  that  as  the  King  had  desired  it, 
and  mentioned  him  by  name,  it  was  his  duty  to 
comply.  Thereupon  Garat  carried  him  off  to  the 
Temple.  Beyond  a  few  conventionally  compassion- 
ate words  from  the  Minister,  to  which  the  Abbe  was 
discreet  enough  not  to  respond,  the  journey  was 
completed  in  silence.  Edgeworth  was  in  plain 
clothes,  which  he  was  directed  to  retain.  Arrived 
at  their  destination,  they  were  stopped  at  the  barrier 
separating  the  court  from  the  garden,  and  subjected 
to  a  rigorous  preliminary  inspection  from  which  the 
Minister  himself  was  not  exempted.  They  then 
crossed  the  garden  leading  to  the  Tower  (strictly 
Towers)  of  the  Temple,  where  the  prisoners  were 
confined.  After  this,  with  much  formidable  un- 
bolting and  unbarring,  they  were  admitted  at  the 
little,  low  and  narrow  door  shown  in  Clery's  frontis- 
piece, and  ushered  into  a  room  crowded  with  the 
Commissaries  specially  charged  with  the  custody  of 
the  captives.  Garat  read  them  his  instructions, 
with  the  result  that  he  was  allowed  to  go  up  to  the 
King,  then  located  on  the  second  floor  of  the  greater 
Tower,  to  which  he  had  been  transferred  in  Septem- 
ber 1792.  Meanwhile,  Edgeworth  was  left  behind, 
opportunity  being  taken  for  searching  him  carefully 
from  head  to  foot,  to  make  sure  that  he  had  neither 
arms  nor  poison  upon  him.  By  the  time  this  was 
effected,  a  message  was  received  that  Louis  would 
see  his  confessor,  who  was  thereupon  conducted 
up  the  dark  and  winding  turret  staircase,  garnished 
at  intervals  by  wickets  with  ribald  and  half-drunken 
sentries,  into  the  King's  presence. 

He  found  Louis  standing  in  the  centre  of  a  group 


I  s  g  a 

8  o  as  g 

«S   O   OX! 

^^--  s 

eo  =«  *  2 
?«£•? 

rH    5   <o  4J 

!>      '-J      "J 
•—      =-      t-< 

if    a  a 

J   «  -^   3 
fc-S 


I|"S 

O  eo  o 


THE  ABBE  EDGEWORTH  135 

including  Garat  and  several  members  of  the  Com- 
mune. He  was  calm,  dignified,  and  even  gracious — 
ostensibly  much  less  perturbed  than  those  about 
him.  On  Edgeworth's  arrival  he  motioned  them 
away,  closing  the  door  after  them  himself.  The 
Abbe,  overcome  with  emotion,  fell  at  his  feet ;  and 
Louis,  long  unaccustomed  to  manifestations  of  loy- 
alty, was  visibly  affected.  He  helped  Edge  worth 
to  rise,  and  took  him  through  his  bedroom  to  the 
little  unwarmed  and  scantily  furnished  turret-closet 
to  which  it  led,  where  they  were  less  likely  to  be 
overheard.  Despite  the  awful  prospects  of  the 
morrow,  he  was  humanly  eager  for  news  from  the 
outer  world.  His  first  act,  however,  pending  the 
arrival  of  his  family  from  the  third  story — per- 
mission for  which  had  been  conceded  by  the  Exe- 
cutive Council — was  to  read  his  well-known  will, 
drawn  up  in  the  preceding  December,  while  he  was 
still  in  doubt  whether  he  would  be  allowed  the 
services  of  a  priest.  He  read  it,  not  only  once,  but 
twice,  in  a  firm  voice,  faltering  only  at  the  references 
to  his  family,  but  unshaken  at  mention  of  his  own 
misfortunes.  He  asked  subsequently  for  news  as 
to  the  condition  of  the  clergy,  and  especially  of 
his  own  spiritual  pastor,  the  Archbishop  of  Paris. 
A  chance  allusion  to  the  Duke  of  Orleans  led  him 
to  speak  of  that  disloyal  relative  ;  but  he  did  so 
more  in  sorrow  than  in  anger,  declaring  that  he 
would  not  change  places  with  him.  This  tele-a-tite 
was  interrupted  by  the  appearance  of  a  Commissary 
announcing  the  advent  of  the  royal  family  to  take 
that  final  farewell  which  (pictorially)  has  been  so 
much  represented — and  misrepresented. 

The  King  at  once  started  off,  leaving  Edgeworth 
by  himself  in  the  turret-closet.  The  interview  took 
place  in  the  contracted  dining-room  adjoining  the 


136  LATER  ESSAYS 

antechamber  ;  and  during  a  quarter  of  an  hour  the 
hysterical  shrieks  of  the  women  were  so  piercing 
that  they  must  have  been  audible  through  the 
walls  of  the  tower,  but  by  and  by  they  subsided 
into  exhausted  undertones  ;  and  when  the  allotted 
period  had  expired,  and  the  last  heart-rending 
adieux  had  followed  in  the  antechamber,  the  King 
returned  to  his  confessor  terribly  agitated.  Clery 
persuaded  him  to  eat  some  supper,  which  was  a 
matter  of  a  few  minutes  ;  and  Edgeworth  then 
proposed  that  arrangements  should  be  made  for 
administering  the  Holy  Communion.  The  King 
hesitated,  fearing  to  compromise  his  companion  ; 
but  as  the  Abbe  persisted,  he  allowed  him  to  en- 
deavour to  obtain  permission  from  the  authorities 
on  the  spot.  This  was  at  first  refused,  but  Edge- 
worth's  personality,  or  pertinacity,  eventually  sur- 
mounted every  objection  ;  and  on  his  written  appli- 
cation, coupled  with  the  express  condition  that 
the  ceremony  should  be  over  by  seven  o'clock  on 
the  morrow  at  the  latest,  since  at  eight  the  King 
must  start  for  the  place  of  execution,  the  Commis- 
saries consented  to  make  the  needful  preparations. 
It  was  past  ten  in  the  evening  when  Edgeworth 
returned  to  the  King  with  this  intelligence,  which 
was  received  with  the  utmost  satisfaction.  They 
remained  conversing  together  far  into  the  night, 
by  which  time  the  King  showed  signs  of  fatigue, 
and  the  Abbe  suggested  that  he  should  take  some 
rest.  He  complied  on  the  understanding  that  Edge- 
worth  would  do  likewise,  and  Edgeworth  there- 
fore retired  into  Clery's  room,  the  fourth  room 
on  the  floor,  next  to  that  of  Louis.  Utterly  un- 
nerved himself,  he  presently  heard  the  King  com- 
posedly giving  Clery  his  orders  for  the  morrow. 
After  this  his  Majesty  slept  until  five,  when  he  got 


THE  ABBfi  EDGE  WORTH  137 

up  and  talked  to  Edgeworth  for  an  hour.  On 
leaving  him,  the  Abbe  found  that  the  Commissaries 
had,  with  Clery's  aid,1  scrupulously  and,  indeed, 
liberally  fulfilled  their  part  of  the  compact.  An 
altar  had  been  extemporized  in  the  King's  bedroom, 
furnished  with  vestments  and  vessels  borrowed  from 
the  neighbouring  chapel  of  the  old  Convent  des 
Capucins  du  Marais.2  The  King  then  heard  Mass 
and  communicated.  Left  for  a  short  space  to  finish 
his  prayers,  Edgeworth  later  found  him  seated  by 
the  defective  stove  vainly  endeavouring  to  warm 
himself,  but  mentally  at  ease. 

By  this  time  day  was  dawning,  and  drums  were 
beating  the  generate  all  over  Paris,  freezing  the  blood 
in  Edgeworth's  veins.  The  King  heard  them  un- 
concerned, only  saying  quietly,  '  Apparently  the 
national  guards  are  beginning  to  assemble  '.  Pieces 
of  artillery  were  rumbling  to  and  fro,  taking  up 
the  stations  allotted  to  them  in  Santerre's  pro- 
gramme. Outside  the  Tower  the  sound  of  officers' 
voices  and  the  trampling  of  horses'  hoofs  showed 
that  detachments  of  cavalry  were  filling  the  court- 
yard. The  King  had  hoped  to  see  his  wife  once 
more,  and  had,  indeed,  promised  her  to  do  so; 
but  Edgeworth  now  urgently  advised  him  not  to 
expose  her  to  an  ordeal  beyond  her  strength.  '  You 
are  right,  sir,'  he  replied,  *  it  would  give  her 
her  death-blow  ;  it  is  better  for  me  to  deprive 
myself  of  this  sad  consolation,  and  to  let  her  live 
on  hope  for  a  few  moments  longer.'  From  seven 
till  eight  they  remained  in  the  closet,  the  King 
himself  replying  to  the  numerous  interrupters, 
anxious  to  assure  themselves  of  his  safe-keeping 
there.  This  he  did  with  uniform  restraint  and 
patience,  simply  remarking  to  Edgeworth  when 

1  Clery,  p.  229.  "  Ibid.,  p.  226. 


138  LATER  ESSAYS 

one  of  them  was  more  than  usually  obnoxious  : 
4  See  how  these  people  treat  me  !  '  Referring,  on 
another  occasion,  to  their  evident  fear  that  he  would 
make  away  with  himself,  he  added  :  '  No  !  since 
it  must  be,  I  shall  know  how  to  die  !  ' 

At  length  the  final  summons  came  ;  and  Santerrc, 
accompanied  by  seven  or  eight  municipal  officers 
and  ten  soldiers,  pressed  into  the  bedroom.  The 
King  at  once  came  out  of  his  closet  and,  addressing 
Santerre,  said  to  him,  '  You  are  come  for  me  ?  ' 
'  Yes,'  was  the  answer.  The  King  desired  him  to 
wait  a  minute,  and  went  back  to  Edgeworth  for 
his  blessing  and  prayers.  Presently  he  returned, 
followed  by  the  Abbe.  Seeing  his  visitors  wore  their 
hats,  he  called  for  his  own,  which  Clery,  in  tears, 
immediately  brought  to  him.  He  had  in  his  hand 
his  will,  wrhich  he  presented  to  a  municipal  officer, 
Jacques  Roux,  who  was  a  little  in  advance  of  the 
rest,  asking  him  to  give  it  to  the  Queen — to  his 
wife.  Roux  replied  :  '  It  is  no  business  of  mine. 
I  am  here  to  conduct  you  to  the  scaffold  '.*  The 
King,  acquiescing,  then  presented  it  to  another 
municipal  officer  stationed  permanently  at  the 
Temple,  begging  him  to  deliver  it  to  the  Queen, 
adding  that  he  might  read  it,  as  there  were  things 
in  it  that  he  wished  made  known  to  the  Commune. 
His  Majesty  subsequently  addressed  a  few  part- 
ing injunctions  concerning  Clery  to  the  municipal 
officers.  As  no  one  replied,  he  looked  at  Santerre 
and  said,  '  Let  us  go  '.2 

These  were  the  last  words  he  uttered  in  his  Temple 
apartments.  At  the  top  of  the  stairs,  in  descending, 

1  Cf.  Roux  in  Beaucourt,  ii.  309  ;   Clery,  pp.  237-8. 

2  '  Marchons,'  says  Edgeworth  ;    '  Partons,'  says  Clery ; 
and  this  latter,  Dallas,  his  first  English  translator,  renders 
'  Lead   on  ' — which  is  quite  in  the   vein   of   Mr.   Vincent 
Crummies. 


THE  ABBE  EDGEWORTH  139 

he  encountered  Mathey,  the  concierge  of  the  Tower, 
to  whom,  on  the  preceding  Saturday,  provoked  by 
the  man's  unbearable  insolence,  he  had  spoken 
sharply.  For  this  he  now  asked  his  pardon,  bidding 
him  kindly  not  to  take  it  ill.  Mathey,  however, 
made  no  answer,  and  even  affected  to  hold  back 
from  the  King  while  he  was  speaking.1  Louis  then 
left  the  Tower  on  foot,  turning  round  more  than 
once  in  his  progress  to  look  at  the  gloomy  structure 
which  for  five  weary  months  had  been  his  prison, 
and  which  still  retained  within  its  walls  all  that  he 
held  most  dear.  He  was  manifestly  much  affected, 
and  struggling  hard  to  collect  his  energies.  At  the 
exit  gate  of  the  Temple  a  closed  carriage  was  waiting 
with  two  gendarmes.  They  opened  the  door,  and 
entered  the  vehicle  with  the  King  and  his  com- 
panion, who  sat  by  his  side.  Edgeworth  had  been 
told  privately  on  the  previous  day  that  an  effort 
would  be  made  to  rescue  his  Majesty  at  the  scaffold. 
He  had  also  heard  (though  this  must  have  been  after 
the  event)  that  the  gendarmes  had  orders  to 
assassinate  the  King  on  the  least  indication  of  any 
popular  movement  in  his  favour.  This  he  hesitated 
to  believe  ;  2  and,  in  any  case,  what  was  projected 
by  the  too  sanguine  conspirators  was  rendered 
futile  by  the  far-reaching  precautions  of  the  vigilant 
Santerre.  During  the  journey  to  the  Place  de  la 
Revolution  (late  Place  Louis  XV),  which  lasted 
about  two  hours,  the  King,  not  being  able  to 
converse  with  the  Abbe  in  the  presence  of  the  guards, 
was  at  first  silent.  The  Abbe  handed  to  him  the 
only  book  he  had  with  him,  his  breviary,  indicating 
psalms  proper  to  the  occasion,  which  they  repeated 
alternately.  A  troop  of  mounted  gendarmes  led 

1    Clery,  p.  289. 
But  apparently  it  was  true.    (Beaucourt,  i.  331.) 


140  LATER  ESSAYS 

the  van  of  the  cortege  ;  Santerre  and  the  Mayor 
of  Paris  (Chambon)  followed  with  the  municipal 
officers.  Next  came  three  pieces  of  heavy  ordnance, 
the  gunners  of  which  had  their  matches  lit ;  and  then 
the  carriage.  In  front  of  the  horses — according  to 
Edgeworth — were  stationed  drummers,  whose  func- 
tion it  was  to  drown  summarily  any  inopportune 
demonstrations. 

By  decree  of  the  National  Convention,  the  guillo- 
tine had  been  erected  in  the  centre  of  the  square, 
on  a  site  facing  the  entrance  to  the  Tuileries,  be- 
tween the  avenue  leading  to  the  Champs  Elysees 
and  the  pedestal  occupied  up  to  August  1792  by 
that  butt  of  the  epigrammatists,  Bouchardon's 
bronze  equestrian  statue  of  his  Majesty's  grand- 
father. Here,  shortly  after  ten,  the  carriage  stopped 
in  the  space  which  had  been  cleared  about  the 
scaffold.  This  space  was  encircled  by  cannon  ;  and 
beyond,  as  far  as  the  eye  could  reach,  the  great 
enclosure  was  occupied  with  a  multitude  of  armed 
spectators.  The  King  whispered  to  his  companion, 
'  We  have  arrived,  unless  I  am  mistaken  '.  An 
executioner  came  to  open  the  door,  and  the  gen- 
darmes prepared  to  alight ;  but  the  King  stopped 
them,  saying  in  an  authoritative  tone,  '  Messieurs, 
I  commend  this  gentleman  to  you  ;  take  care  that 
he  receives  no  insult  after  my  death.  I  charge  you 
to  look  to  this  matter  !  ' — an  injunction  to  which 
no  reply  was  at  first  vouchsafed,  but,  seeing  that  the 
King  was  about  to  repeat  his  words,  an  ironic 
assurance  was  roughly  given  that  Edgeworth  would 
be  duly  attended  to. 

The  executioners  next  surrounded  the  King  with 
intent  to  undress  him ;  but  he  proudly  forestalled 
their  efforts  by  undoing  his  collar  and  opening  his 
shirt.  They  then  cut  his  hair.  Their  proposal  to 


THE  ABBfi  EDGEWORTH  141 

tie  his  hands  naturally  made  him  indignant,  and  he 
protested,  and  would  even  have  resisted  ;  but,  at 
the  persuasion  of  Edgeworth,  he  submitted.  His 
hands  being  tied — behind  his  back  x — Edgeworth 
helped  him  up  the  steep  steps  to  the  scaffold  ;  and 
from  the  difficulty  experienced  in  mounting,  began 
to  fear  that  his  courage  was  failing.  But  no  sooner 
had  the  King  reached  the  topmost  step  than  he, 
as  it  were,  escaped  from  his  companion.  Traversing 
the  entire  breadth  of  the  scaffold  with  a  firm  tread, 
he  silenced  by  a  single  glance  the  noisy  drummers 
in  front  of  him ;  and,  in  a  voice  loud  enough  to  be 
plainly  audible  at  the  neighbouring  Pont  Tournant, 
began  to  declare  that  he  died  innocent  of  the  crimes 
imputed  to  him  ;  that  he  forgave  the  authors  of 
his  death,  and  that  he  prayed  God  the  blood  they 
were  about  to  shed  might  never  fall  on  France.  He 
would  have  added  more  ;  but  a  mounted  officer 
(Santerre),  brandishing  his  sabre,  rode  furiously 
forward,  and  commanded  the  drummers  to  strike 
up  again.  Then,  after  a  moment  of  hesitation, 
Sanson  and  his  four  commis  closed  relentlessly  upon 
their  pinioned  victim  and  thrust  him  under  the 
nxe.  .  .  . 

Here,  practically,  finishes  Edgeworth's  story  of 
the  crowded  eighteen  hours  between  four  o'clock  in 
the  afternoon  of  Sunday,  January  20,  1793,  and 
twenty-two  minutes  past  ten  on  Monday  the  21st, 
during  which  he  must  have  been  in  almost  continuous 
attendance  on  Louis  XVI.2  It  will  be  noted  that 
Edgeworth  makes  no  reference  to  the  traditional 
'  Son  of  St.  Louis,  ascend  to  Heaven  ',  with  which, 
at  the  supreme  moment,  he  is  alleged  to  have  bade 
farewell  to  the  King.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  either 

1  Beaucourt,  i.  355,  380  ;   ii.  863. 

*  Proems-verbal  of  the  Execution,  Beaucourt,  ii.  307. 


142  LATER  ESSAYS 

from  diffidence  or  modesty,  he  was  usually  very 
reserved  on  this  particular  subject,  protesting, 
when  interrogated,  that,  in  the  tension  and  terror 
of  the  moment,  he  was  not  certain  what  he  had 
said  ;  and  there  were  notoriously  many  variations 
besides  the  compact  and  popular  version  quoted 
above.  This,  no  doubt,  led  to  its  being  attributed 
to,  or  claimed  by,  others  ;  and  of  late  years  it  has 
been  customary  to  assign  the  invention  of  the 
apostrophe  to  the  younger  Lacretelle,  who  '  half 
confessed  '  that  he  coined  it  ad  hoc  for  a  newspaper 
report.  The  matter,  nevertheless,  is  far  from  being 
free  from  doubt,  notwithstanding  Louis  Blanc's 
'  erreur  historique  '.  Madame  Royale  and  several 
of  Edgeworth's  friends  felt  assured  that  he  did  utter 
something  of  the  kind  ;  and  those  who  care  to 
investigate  minutely  what  may  be  an  insoluble 
question,  will  do  wisely  to  consult  the  lengthy 
Appendix  to  M.  de  Beaucourt's  second  volume,  in 
which  the  pros  and  cons  are  impartially  and  ex- 
haustively discussed.1 

To  return  to  Edgeworth  himself.  For  a  few 
seconds  after  the  execution  he  seems  to  have  knelt 
praying  by  the  decapitated  body.  Then,  profiting 
by  the  confused  clamour  of  '  Vive  la  Republique  !  ' 
he  hurriedly  descended  the  scaffold-steps  and  made 
his  way  unopposed  through  the  exulting  crowd. 
Presently  emerging  from  its  straggling  outskirts, 
he  hastened  to  Malesherbes,  for  whom  the  King 
had  given  him  a  parting  word.  He  found  the  old 
man  in  tears.  Soon  himself  to  suffer  like  his  master, 
Malesherbes  counselled  Edgeworth  to  fly  at  once 
from  Paris — even  from  France.  But  the  Abbe  was 
a  fanatic  of  duty.  He  had  still  his  deputed  diocese 
and  his  office  to  the  Princess  Elizabeth,  and  his 
1  Beaucourt,  ii.  353-69. 


THE  ABBE  EDGEVVORTH  143 

rigid  rectitude  taught  him  that  he  must  wait. 
With  a  faithful  servant,  Louis  Bousset,  who  never 
afterwards  left  him,  he  accordingly  retired  once 
more  to  Choisy. 

For  the  next  few  years  his  life  was  that  of  an 
outlaw,  in  daily  peril  of  denunciation  and  death. 
At  Choisy  he  found  refuge  in  the  house  of  the  Baron 
de  la  Lezardiere,  whose  wife  had  been  guillotined 
on  the  same  day  as  Louis  XVI.  The  baron  lodged 
him  in  the  poor  lady's  room,  and  here  for  three 
months  he  remained  hidden.  But  he  was  destined 
to  many  moving  accidents  which  can  scarcely  be 
recounted  in  detail.  His  danger  was  not  small, 
for  Hebert,  the  late  King's  own  confessor,  was 
guillotined  in  the  following  year.  Edgeworth's 
head,  too,  was  demanded  by  three  of  the  Parisian 
clubs  ;  but  as  it  was  supposed  that  he  had  escaped 
to  England,  he  thought  himself  safe,  and  even  made 
several  flying  visits  to  his  flock  at  Paris.  One  of 
his  letters  to  the  Archbishop,  however,  went  astray, 
and  fell  into  the  hands  of  the  Comite  de  Salut 
Public,  with  the  result  that  some  two  hundred 
sans-culottes  paid  a  visit  to  the  Chateau  de  la 
Lezardiere,  and  the  Abbe  had  just  time  to  burn 
his  papers  and  decamp.  Meanwhile  his  host  and 
family  were  marched  off  to  the  capital  to  prison, 
only  narrowly  escaping  murder  on  the  road — to  save 
their  captors  needless  trouble.  Happily,  they  were 
eventually  released.  In  their  absence  the  Abbe 
had  gone  back  to  the  vacated  chateau.  But  in 
brief  space  its  occupants  had  notice  of  a  fresh 
invasion ;  and  Edgeworth,  flying  precipitately, 
must  have  acquired  the  Shakespearean  '  receipt  of 
fern-seed  ',  since,  with  the  aid  of  knotted  hair 
and  a  civilian  disguise  of  national  blue,  he  actually 
contrived  to  pass  on  the  road  the  very  ruffians  who 


144  LATER  ESSAYS 

were  in  search  of  him.  But  although,  notwithstand- 
ing this  deliverance,  he  returned  to  Choisy,  it  was 
manifestly  no  longer  a  place  of  security  ;  and  after 
going  to  Paris  to  bid  good-bye  to  his  mother  (whom 
he  was  never  to  see  again),  he  moved  to  Montigny, 
near  Pithiviers,  where,  under  the  name  of  Monsieur 
Essex,  and  as  a  friend  of  the  family,  he  was 
warmly  welcomed  by  the  Comte  Louis  de  Roche- 
chouart.  Here,  however,  his  troubles  speedily 
revived.  An  incautious  letter  to  Madame  Elizabeth 
was  again  intercepted  by  the  Comite,  and  his  arrest 
became  imminent.  The  neighbourhood  grew  sus- 
picious of  the  mysterious  stranger,  and  secret  well- 
wishers  warned  him  to  fly  farther  afield.  He  did, 
and  went  to  Fontainebleau,  making  perilous  passage 
to  that  then-sequestered  district  in  a  conveyance 
drawn  by  a  horse  that  had  never  before  been  in 
harness.  But  now  the  decree  enjoining  the  arrest 
of  all  foreigners  rendered  even  Fontainebleau  inhos- 
pitable ;  and  once  more  he  had  to  move.  On  the 
road  to  Rouen  the  diligence  was  raided  by  soldiery, 
and  the  Abbe,  losing  courage,  grew  tongue-tied 
with  terror ;  but  by  the  adroit  self-possession  of 
a  servant  whom  Lezardiere  had  sent  to  aid  him 
in  his  flight,  he  succeeded  in  getting  away,  and 
eventually  both  he  and  his  faithful  Bousset  reached 
the  sleepy  old  cathedral  city  of  Bayeux.  Here,  for 
a  time,  they  seemed  safe ;  and,  being  but  five 
miles  from  the  coast,  access  to  England  should  have 
been  feasible.  But  Edgeworth  still  considered 
himself  bound  by  his  office  to  the  Princess  Elizabeth  ; 
and  while  there  was  any  chance  of  serving  or  saving 
her  he  could  not  make  up  his  mind  to  leave  the 
country.  Therefore,  exposed  to  many  hazards, 
he  remained  at  Bayeux,  where  he  was  joined  by 
Lezardiere,  who  by  this  date  had  lost  nearly  all 


THE  ABBE  EDGEWORTH  145 

his  family.  It  was  at  Bayeux  that  the  Abbe,  too, 
heard  of  the  imprisonment  of  his  sister  and  mother 
in  the  convent  of  the  Austin  nuns,  where,  it  is  sup- 
posed, Mrs.  Edgeworth  fell  ill  and  died.1  Then, 
in  May  1794,  following  the  execution  of  Marie- 
Antoinette  in  the  preceding  October,  came  the 
guillotining  of  the  Princess  Elizabeth  ;  and  the 
Abbe  at  last  felt  himself  free  to  bid  good-bye  to 
France.  But  bidding  good-bye  to  France,  even 
with  England  in  prospect,  was  no  easy  matter, 
although  his  brother  Ussher  and  others  freely 
supplied  him  with  funds.  Two  years  more  elapsed 
before  Edgeworth,  after  many  perils  and  disappoint- 
ments,2 finally  found  himself  landed  from  a  fishing- 
boat  on  the  little  island  of  Saint  Marcouf,  then 
occupied  by  British  troops.  He  was  speedily  passed 
on  to  England  in  a  man-of-war,  and  in  August  1796 
arrived  at  Portsmouth.  Next  day  he  travelled  to 
London  and  put  up  at  the  Sabloniere  Hotel,  in 
Leicester  Square — a  favoured  resort  of  foreigners, 
which  had  also  the  distinction  of  including  Hogarth's 
old  home. 

Henceforth  the  chronicle  of  his  career  is  plain- 
sailing  enough.  He  paid  a  fleeting  visit  to  Edinburgh 
to  give  the  Princess's  last  messages  to  her  favourite 
brother,  the  Count  d'Artois,  then  practically 
interned  at  the  northern  Alsatia  of  Holyrood  by 

1  According  to  a  note  in  Alger's  Englishmen  in  the  French 
Revolution,  1889,  p.  337,  Elizabeth,  or  Betty  Firmont  (sister 
to  the  Abbe),  was  at  the  Austin  Convent  from  February  23 
to  September  26,  1794.  She  was  still  living  at  Paris  in 
1799. 

4  He  lived,  '  forgotten  and  undisturbed  ',  in  Normandy  for 
nearly  three  years,  wrote  Louis  XVIII  to  Madame  Royale, 
and  then  went  over  to  England  '  without  any  difficulty '. 
Either  the  illustrious  epicure  of  Blankenburg  must  have  mis- 
understood the  situation,  or  (which  is  more  probable)  Edge- 
worth  made  light  orally  of  his  past  dangers. 

L 


146  LATER  ESSAYS 

fear  of  his  creditors.1  After  a  week's  absence  he 
came  back  to  London,  where  he  was  at  once  sum- 
moned to  an  interview  with  Pitt,  and  informed 
that  King  George  III  intended  to  grant  him  a  pension 
for  his  services  to  his  brother-monarch  Louis  XVI — 
a  bounty  which,  looking  to  the  destitute  condition 
of  many  of  the  French  emigres  then  in  this  country, 
the  Abbe  did  not  then  think  himself  warranted 
in  taking.  Concurrently,  from  the  Governors  of 
Maynooth  College,  at  Moylan's  suggestion,  came  an 
invitation  to  assume  the  presidency  of  that  institu- 
tion, which  he  also  declined.  Among  other  interest- 
ing incidents  of  his  stay  in  the  metropolis  was 
a  meeting  at  the  Marquess  of  Buckingham's  with 
his  cousin,  Maria  Edgeworth,  then  about  thirty, 
and  as  yet  only  the  author  of  Letters  to  Literary 
Ladies  and  the  three  little  volumes  of  the  Parent's 
Assistant.  She  was  hypnotized  by  her  new-found 
relative,  and  declares  in  her  memoirs  2  that  she  will 
never  forget  the  short  hours  she  spent  in  his 
society.  The  event,  however,  which  at  this  date 
had  perhaps  the  greatest  effect  on  Edgeworth's 
coming  proceedings,  was  a  letter  he  received  from 
that  indefatigable  producer  of  '  epistolary  correspon- 
dence ',  Louis  XVIII.  It  was  dated  September  19, 
1796,3  from  his  then  pausing- place,  Blankenburg, 
in  Brunswick  ;  and  it  exhorted  Edgeworth,  in  the 
usual  unctuous  style  (and  doubtless  for  publication), 
to  lose  no  time  in  compiling  his  projected  (but 
never  written)  Memoirs,  and  in  printing  everything 
which  his  cloth  did  not  forbid  him  to  give  to  the 
world.  Not  long  afterwards,  circumstances  carried 
the  Abbe  to  Blankenburg  itself,  which  brings  us  to 

1  Steuart's  Exiled  Bourbons  in  Scotland,   1908,   pp.  27, 
39-41. 

2  Montagu,  p.  190.  3  Beaucourt,  i.  55. 


THE  ABBE  EDGEWORTH  147 

ground  already  travelled  on  a  previous  occasion,1  and 
authorizes  an  even  more  rapid  survey  of  the  rest 
of  the  story. 

While  Edgeworth  was  still  lingering  in  London, 
and  hesitating  whether  he  should  comply  with  his 
brother  Ussher's  appeal  to  him  to  settle  permanently 
in  Ireland,  Mile  de  la  Lezardiere  arrived  from  France 
with  urgent  dispatches  for  Louis  XVIII,  which  were 
to  have  been  carried  to  Blankenburg  by  Mile  de  la 
Lezardiere's  brother,  but  as  he  had  already  started, 
his  sister  begged  the  Abbe  to  undertake  the  duty. 
Borrowing  a  hundred  pounds  from  a  relative, 
Edgeworth  accordingly  started  for  Blankenburg, 
which  he  reached  in  the  spring  of  1797.  Here,  with 
ceremonious  formality,  he  was  welcomed  by 
Louis  XVIII,  to  whom  he  narrated  his  recollections 
of  the  tragedy  of  January  1793 — recollections  at 
which  his  Majesty  wept  copiously.  This  visit 
decided  Edgeworth's  future.  In  a  few  weeks  the 
'  Abbe  de  Firmon  ',  as  the  King  called  him,  had 
become  so  indispensable  to  the  little  group  of  rela- 
tions and  refugees  at  the  three-roomed  Court  at 
Blankenburg  that  he  was  offered,  and  felt  himself 
constrained  to  accept,  the  office  (unsalaried)  of 
a  Chaplain  to  the  self-styled  monarch.  With  him  he 
proceeded  to  his  next  retreat  at  Mittau,  in  Courland  ; 
and  at  Mittau  took  part  in  the  marriage  of  Madame 
Royale  to  her  cousin,  the  Due  d'Angouleme.  In 
1800,  a  year  afterwards,  he  was  sent  by  Louis  to 
St.  Petersburg  to  carry  the  Order  of  the  Saint 
Esprit  to  Paul  I,  who  gave  him  a  pension  and  a 
handsome  souvenir  ;  and  he  subsequently  accom- 
panied the  '  Comte  de  Lille  '  and  his  niece  in  their 
first  miserable  flight  from  Mittau,  and  with  them 

1  '  The  Early  Years  of  Madame  Royale,'  National  Reviav, 
February  1913,  p.  954. 

L  2 


148  LATER  ESSAYS 

returned  once  more  from  Warsaw  to  Mittau  in 
1804.  In  1805  he  lost  his  income  by  the  failure  of 
the  person  to  whom  the  proceeds  of  the  sale  of  his 
Firmount  property  had  been  lent.  To  save  the 
pocket  of  his  impecunious  royal  master  (who  had 
never  paid  him  a  farthing),  and  actuated  also  by 
the  necessities  of  others  who  were  involved  in  the 
same  catastrophe,  he  was  induced  to  lay  his  case 
before  Pitt,  then  Hearing  death.1  He  did  so,  simply 
and  frankly,  as  was  his  wont  ;  and  an  immediate 
response  placed  him  in  possession  of  an  allowance 
that  more  than  made  up  for  the  loss  he  had  sustained. 
This  he  did  not  long  enjoy.  In  April  1807  there 
straggled  through  Mittau  a  forlorn  train  of  French 
soldiers  from  the  Grande  Annie,  who  had  been  taken 
by  the  Russians.  Way-worn  and  wounded,  they 
were  bound  for  the  town  prison.  Some  of  their 
companions  had  died  on  the  road,  and  those  remain- 
ing were  sick  and  destitute.  The  Abbe  at  once 
petitioned  the  King  to  let  him  go  to  their  assistance. 
With  the  aid  of  Bousset,  he  nursed  these  unfortunate 
men  night  and  day,  but  several  of  them  succumbed. 
Presently  hospital  fever  broke  out,  by  which  both 
Edgeworth  and  his  devoted  servant  wrere  attacked. 
Bousset,  being  young  and  strong,  eventually  re- 
covered ;  but  the  Abbe's  long  trials  had  enfeebled 
a  constitution  never  robust,  and  it  was  soon  clear 
that  he  would  not  recover.  Madame  Royale,  re- 
gardless of  her  danger,  hastened  to  his  bedside, 
tended  him  with  her  own  hands,  and  watched  by 
him  continuously  until  his  death  on  May  22,  1807. 
Tradition  attributes  to  her  a  high-flown  valediction, 
which  (if  she  really  uttered  it)  reads  like  a  variation 
of  the  Abbe's  much-contested  farewell  to  her  father 
in  the  Place  de  la  Revolution.  But  it  is  quite 
1  He  died  January  23,  1806. 


THE  ABBE  EDGE  WORTH  149 

credible  that,  when  expostulated  with  on  her  own 
account,  she  did,  in  effect,  insist  that  if  others 
feared  contagion,  nothing  should  prevent  her  from 
nursing,  unaided,  the  noble  and  generous  friend 
who  had  given  up  everything  for  her  family.  With 
her  husband,  the  entire  Court,  and  many  of  the 
inhabitants  of  Mittau,  she  followed  on  foot  his 
simple  funeral  procession — a  procession  in  which 
it  was  claimed  that  all  creeds  met  together.  Two 
months  later,  on  July  29,  a  memorial  service  was 
held  in  the  Roman  Catholic  Chapel  in  King  Street, 
Portman  Square,  followed  by  an  oraison  funebre 
from  the  Abbe  de  Bouvens  ;  and  '  classic  Louis  * 
composed  a  Latin  epitaph.1 

But  such  a  life,  such  a  death,  require  neither 
ornate  epitaph  nor  funeral  oration.  Devout  by 
nature,  and  retiring  by  temperament,  Edgeworth, 
at  the  outset,  had  seemed  to  rank  with  those  for 
whom  the  daily  round,  the  '  common  task  ',  suffice  ; 
and  who,  neither  changing  nor  seeking  to  change 
their  allotted  place,  are  contented  to  leave  behind 
them  the  fragrant  memory  of  a  humble  and  un- 
advertised  beneficence.  This,  at  any  rate,  was  his 
case  for  three-fourths  of  his  career.  Then  the 
tragedy  of  1793  lifted  him  suddenly  to  a  position 
of  perilous  pre-eminence,  and  invested  his  latter 
years  with  an  aura  of  sublimity.  '  I  am  now  here  ', 
he  had  written  from  Warsaw  in  1804,  '  bound  to 
the  most  unfortunate  family  in  the  universe  and 
quite  determined  to  share  their  misfortunes  to  the 
very  end.'  He  did  so — with  absolute  fidelity.  He 
belongs  to  the  uncanonized  Saints  of  self-sacrifice — 
the  uncenotaphed  Martyrs  to  duty. 

1  On  Wednesday,  January  21,  1920,  a  Mass  was  said  in  the 
crypt  of  the  Cathedral  of  St.  Denis  in  commemoration  of 
Louis  XVI. 


A  CASUAL  CAUSERIE 

In  Prose  and  Verse 


An  Old-time  Memento — Tidying  up — Dickens  and  La 
Bruyere — Errata  :  An  Eclogue — A  Dilatory  Poet — 
Staircase-wit — A  Disputed  Maxim — On  Taking  Pains 
— Index-learning — By  Way  of  Preface — Diction- 
ary Readers — Johnsoniana — Aura  Popularis — For  a 
Volume  of  Essays — Pictures  that  Think — Epigrams 
of  the  War — The  Citizen  of  the  World — A  Goldsmith 
Illustrator — Writing  Oneself  Down — Re-reading — 
Herder  on  Authorship — To  a  Lady — The  Law  of 
Restraint — An  Old  Magazine — What  is  a  '  Conger  ?  ' 
— '  A  Dormitive  to  Bedivard  '. 


A  CASUAL  CAUSE11IE 


AN   OLD-TIME  MEMENTO 

THERE  lie  before  me  two  battered  copper  medals 
on  which  sundry  burnished  and  irregular  bosses 
serve  to  represent  the  half-dozen  ships  employed 
by  '  EDWARD  VERXON,  Esq.,  Vice- Admiral  of  the 
Blue  ',  in  the  taking  of  Portobello,  '  according  to 
plan'.  This  fortunate  triumph  over  the  '  whiskered 
Dons  '  occurred  on  November  22,  1739  ;  and  it  is 
curious  to  note  how  its  '  revival  of  British  glory  ' 
seems  to  have  caught  on  with  the  depressed  lieges 
of  George  the  Second.  For  a  space,  the  Admiral's 
head  (until  it  was  supplanted  by  that  of  the  hero 
of  Culloden)  figured  on  endless  inns  and  posting- 
houses,  and  the  story  of  Portobello  became  a  house- 
hold word.  Fifteen  years  after  date,  in  a  corner  of 
Hogarth's  Canvassing  for  Votes,  a  barber  and 
cobbler  are  still  discussing  the  subject  with  the  aid 
of  a  quart  pot  and  some  broken  bits  of  tobacco 
pipe,  much  as  Oglethorpe  explained  the  Siege  of 
Belgrade  to  Boswell  and  Johnson  after  dinner,  or 
'  Lieutenant  Esmond  ',  in  the  Haymarket,  aliquo 
mero,  made  Blenheim  a  reality  for  Messrs.  Addison 
and  Steele.  When  John  Howard  went  a-touring 
in  the  prisons,  he  found  the  game  of  '  portobello  ' 
as  favourite  a  recreation  with  the  convicts  he 
visited  as  skittles  or  mississippi  ;  and  it  is  also 
notable  that  at  a  feast  given  in  London  to  celebrate 
Vernon's  victory,  Henry  Carey  first  sang  '  God 
Save  the  King  '.  Finally,  the  name  of  Portobello 
survived  for  many  years  on  a  long-existent  tavern 
in  St.  Martin's  Lane,  a  few  doors  north  of  the 
church,  and  not  unknown  to  George  Borrow. 
For  the  original  sign  of  this  (amateurs  please  note  !) 


154  LATER  ESSAYS 

Hogarth's  friend,  Peter  Monamy,  the  marine- 
painter,  made  a  popular  picture  of  Vernon's  flagship, 
the  Burford. 

TIDYING  UP 

AMONG  the  little  miseries  of  book  life  is  the 
unaccountable  (and  exasperating)  disappearance  of 
some  volume  on  which,  as  it  chances,  you  are 
engaged,  and  which  you  have  observingly  enriched 
with  marginalia.  It  is  possible  your  working  books 
are  not  methodically  arranged  ;  but,  at  all  events, 
they  are  not  absolutely  strewn  in  '  nests  '  about 
the  floor,  as  were  those  of  the  '  unparalleled  Peiresc  ', 
or  stacked  away  in  fireplaces  and  up  chimneys,  like 
the  unconsidered  purchases  of  a  recently-deceased 
patron  of  the  second-hand  booksellers.  Yet,  in 
some  spring-cleaning  overturn,  or  pitiless  '  tidying- 
up  '  by  the  neat-handed  but  indiscriminate  hand- 
maid of  the  moment,  your  treasure  has  gone — and 
apparently  gone  beyond  recall.  There  is  nothing 
for  it  but  to  borrow  a  circulating-library  copy, 
which  will,  of  course,  be  en  lecture  ;  or  to  advertise 
through  some  authorized  channel — of  necessity 
a  matter  of  time.  And,  as  sayeth  Hippocrates 
unanswerably,  and,  indeed,  obviously,  '  Life  is 
short.'  .  .  .  Here,  fortunately,  one  is  generally 
interrupted  by  a  welcome  feminine  voice  :  '  Is  not  this 
the  little  old  book  you  were  asking  for  ?  We  found 
it  on  the  shelf  in  the  back-room,  between  the 
Cook's  Oracle  and  the  Whole  Duty  of  Man.  1  believe 
Martha  puts  all  works  of  a  size  together  !  '  Precisely. 
That  is  Martha's  reading  of  the  law  of  order. 


A  CASUAL  CAUSERIE  155 

DICKENS  AND  LA  BRUYERE 

'  ANNUAL  income  twenty  pounds,  annual  expendi- 
ture nineteen  nineteen  six,  result  happiness.  Annual 
income  twenty  pounds,  annual  expenditure  twenty 
pounds  ought  and  six,  result  misery.'  I  always 
thought  this  prudential  proposition  was  the  exclusive 
property  of  our  old  friend  Wilkins  Micawber  (David 
Copperfield,  chap.  xii).  But  it  is  plain  now  that  it 
must  have  been  what  Piron  would  have  called 
a  *  vol  d'avance '  by  an  earlier  writer.  Listen  to  La 
Bruyere.  '  Celui-la  est  riche  qui  regoit  plus  qu'il  ne 
consume ;  celui-ld  est  pauvre  dont  la  depense  excede 
la  recette.'  That  I  am  not  the  Columbus  of  this 
coincidence  I  cheerfully  confess  ;  it  is  borrowed 
from  Mr.  EDMUND  GOSSE'S  Three  French  Moralists, 
1918,  p.  93. 

ERRATA:  AN  ECLOGUE 

Author 

THIS  text  is  not  what  it  should  be. 
There  are  some  strange  mistakes  I  see 
I  must  have  missed.     For  who,  right-witted, 
Would  dream  of  putting  '  filled  '  for  '  fitted  '  ? 
Or  '  light '  for  '  tight  '  ?     Or  '  sleep  '  for  *  steep  '  ? 
— Such  things  would  make  the  angels  weep. 

Publisher 

That  is  so.     Still  they  do  occur 
To  the  most  proved  artificer. 
You  must  have  failed  to  cross  your  '  t's  '  : 
GENIUS  is  prone  to  that  disease  ! 

Author 

True.     (And  sometimes,  by  accident, 
The  blunder  betters  what  was  meant !) 


156  LATER  ESSAYS 

But  tell  me.     What  is  my  position  ?' 
Correction  ?     In  a  new  edition  ? 
— Those  '  new  editions  '  have  a  knack, 
Unluckily,  of  holding  back.  .  .  . 

PublisJier 

That  is  because  men  take  more  pains 
To  feed  their  bodies  than  their  brains  ; 
Or  else  because  they  really  care 
For  little  save  the  lighter  fare  ; 
And  then — though  this  is  poor  relief — 
The  life  of  modern  books  is  brief. 
— We'll  paste  in  an  *  Errata  '  slip.  .  .  . 

Author 

\Vhich  none  will  look  at  but  to  skip. 
No  :  the  misfortune  must  be  gulped, 
Until  the  masterpiece  is  ...  pulped  ! 

A  DILATORY  POET 

TOUCHING  blunders  which  better  the  meaning,  the 
locus  classicus  is  Malherbe's  verses  on  Mile  du  Perier. 
The  original  '  copy  '  ran  : 

'  Et  Rosette  a  vecu  ce  que  vivent  les  roses, 
L'espace  d'un  matin.' 

The  printer  put :  '  Et  rose,  elle  a  vecu,'  &c.,  and 
made  the  lines — to  French  taste — imperishable. 
Hard-hearted  biography,  however,  has  insisted  that 
the  lady's  name  was  Marguerite ;  and  the  story  is 
probably  apocryphal.  But  it  is  surely  piquant 
that  it  should  be  related  of  the  most  fastidious  of 
word-smiths.  Malherbe,  it  is  said,  would  use  half 
a  ream  of  paper  in  polishing  a  stanza;  and  once 
undertook  to  console  the  President  de  Verdun  for 


A  CASUAL  CAUSERIE  15? 

the  death  of  his  wife.  But  by  the  time  the  promised 
ode  was  finished,  the  President ,  having  punctiliously 
performed  the  prescribed  period  of  mourning,  had 
not  only  married  again  but  departed  this  life. 
The  poet  had  obviously  been  tardy  in  his  deep- 
drawn  '  melodious  tear  '  ! 

STAIRCASE-WIT 

IF  you  fail  to  understand  a  joke  within  twenty- 
four  hours,  your  symptoms  indicate  sluggish 
apprehension  ;  if  ten  days  should  elapse,  and  you 
are  still  in  the  dark,  you  require  professional  aid. 
But  your  case  is  not  beyond  hope.  As  Isaac  d'Israeli 
is  careful  to  point  out,  slow-mindedness  does  not, 
of  necessity,  mean  dullness.  In  this  connexion 
he  cites  the  Jansenist  Nicole,  who  said  of  a  more 
ready  rival,  '  He  vanquishes  me  in  the  drawing-room, 
but  surrenders  to  me  at  discretion  on  the  stairs '. 
(The  Literary  Character,  ed.  1839,  p.  136.)  This  is 
what  the  French  call  '  V esprit  de  Vescalier  V 

A  DISPUTED  MAXIM 

ONE  of  the  most  acrid  (and  certainly  most 
familiar)  distillations  of  La  Rochefoucauld's  axiom- 
alembic  is  the  famous  '  Dans  Vadversite  de  nos 
meilleurs  amis,  nous  trouvons  toujours  quelque  chose 
qui  tie  nous  deplait  pas  '.  (Maximes,  1665,  No.  99.) 
Swift,  though  taking  this  at  its  face  value  as  '  too 
base  for  human  breast  ',  nevertheless  paraphrased 
it  (not  very  happily)  as  the  text  of  his  wonderful 
verses  on  his  own  death.  Chesterfield,  however, 
professes  to  defend  it  literally  in  a  letter  to  his  son 
of  September  5,  1748.  '  And  why  not  ?  '  asks  his 
lordship  ingenuously.  '  Why  may  I  not  feel  a  very 


158  LATER  ESSAYS 

tender  and  real  concern  for  the  misfortune  of  my 
friend,  and  yet  at  the  same  time  feel  a  pleasing 
consciousness  at  having  discharged  my  duty  to 
him,  by  comforting  and  assisting  him  to  the  utmost 
of  my  power  in  that  misfortune  ?  '  The  best  answer 
to  this  insidious  sophistry  is  that  La  Roche- 
foucauld, probably  under  the  mellowing  influence 
of  Mme  de  La  Fayette,  suppressed  this  particular 
utterance  in  his  later  editions.  But  it  has  taken 
rank,  not  the  less,  as  an  '  irrevocable  verbnm  '. 

ON  TAKING  PAINS 

'  Perfection  is  not  a  trifle  ' 

MICHAEL  AXGELO. 

'Tis  sheer  fatuity  to  spend  your  time 
In  fitting  furbelows  to  toys  of  rhyme  ; 
But— if  you  must — be  sure  your  verses  scan, 
And  make  your  work  as  faultless  as  you  can. 

INDEX-LEARNING 

AMONG  the  short  cuts  adopted  by  would-be 
'  scholars  and  wits  ',  who  seek  to  escape  '  the 
fatigue  of  reading  or  of  thinking ',  Swift  (Tale  of 
a  Tub,  Section  VII)  sardonically  includes  '  A 
thorough  insight  into  the  index  by  which  the  whole 
book  is  governed  and  turned  '.  Nevertheless, 
Index-learning,  as  the  Dean's  friend,  Pope,  seems 
to  admit  (Dunciad,  I,  279),  has  its  advantages. 
It  undoubtedly  '  holds  the  eel  of  science  by  the 
tail '.  Despise  it,  if  you  will ;  but  meanwhile,  as  an 
alterative,  take  occasional  brisk  (and  profitless) 
exercise  in  an  uncatalogued  library !  Many  good 
books  call  urgently  for  this  helpful  clue  to  their 
unplumbed  contents  ;  and  to  leave  them  without 


A  CASUAL  CAUSRRIE  159 

it    is    to    deserve    the    '  peine    infamante '    of    La 
Bruyere. 

(N.B. — Theoretically,  the  best  person  to  prepare 
the  index  to  a  book  is  the  author.  But,  in  practice, 
he  is  often  the  worst  !) 


BY  WAY  OF  PREFACE 

(A  Reverie) 

''Hoc  opus,  hie  labor  est.' 

'  A  PREFACE  ?  '     Yes.     It  might  be  well, 
If  it  could  make  the  volume  sell. 
But  'tis  a  thing  one  may  misuse. 

For  think — 'twixt  '  Qui  s'excuse,  s'accuse,' 

And  the  temptation  to  explain 

Where  explanation  must  be  vain  ; 

Where  everything  you  try  to  say 

But  seems  to  give  yourself  away  ; 

And  though  you  pause  on  every  letter, 

Suggests  that  silence  would  be  better — 

The  feat  is  surely  one  for  those 

Who  deal  with  jugglery  in  prose, 

And,  often,  leads  to  little  more 

Than  simply  blocking  up  the  door. 

Moreover,  there  are  complications. 
If  you  admit  your  limitations, 
Review  your  lapses,  or  refine  them, 
The  Critic  can  but  underline  them, 
And,  to  your  indiscreet  confessing, 
Respond  by  blandly  acquiescing, 
As  he,  of  course,  is  free  to  do 
(In  his  place  you  would  do  it  too  !). 


ICO  LATER  ESSAYS 

Thus,  by  the  give-and-take  of  war, 
You  merely  hoist  with  your  petar  ; 
In  other  words,  for  all  your  candour, 
Get  nothing  but  a  neat  baok-hander  ! 

No.     On  the  whole,  'twere  surely  best 
To  let  a  risky  matter  rest  ; 
And,  in  default  of  special  pleader. 
Refer  the  ruling  ...  to  the  Reader  ! 

DICTIONARY  READERS 

IT  is  easy  to  speak  disparagingly  of  what  does  not 
appeal  to  us  ;  and  I  confess  to  have  formerly 
sympathized  with  the  matter-of-fact  matron  who 
complained  that,  in  dictionary  reading,  she  found 
the  story  somewhat  disconnected.  The  practice, 
nevertheless,  has  its  votaries,  even  among  the 
sommltts  litteraires,  I  knew,  of  course,  from 
Mrs.  Sutherland  Orr  that  Browning  enlarged  his 
poetic  vocabulary  by  a  diligent  study  of  Johnson  ; 
but  I  regarded  this  as  the  inevitable  and  negligible 
exception  to  the  rule.  I  now  discover — on  the 
unimpeachable  authority  of  Lord  Rosebery — that 
Chatham  boasted  he  had  been  twice  through  Bailey, 
and  can  only  say  I  trust  it  was  not  tine  folio  of  1736, 
with  which  I  have  a  respectful  bowing  acquaintance. 
On  equally  good  evidence,  I  also  find  that  Ruskin 
assured  the  late  Sir  James  Murray  that  he  read  the 
first  part  of  the  Oxford  English  Dictionary  from 
beginning  to  end.  (His  subsequent  explorations 
are  unreported.)  '  R.  L.  S.',  too,  seems  seriously  to 
have  advocated  the  occasional  perusal  of  dictionaries 
by  writers  in  order  to  enable  them  to  '  weave  into 
the  tissue  of  their  language  fresh  and  forgotten 
strands  '  ;  and  this  penitential  practice,  though  not 


A  CASUAL  CAUSERIE  161 

for  the  same  purpose,  must  have  been  the  habit  of 
that  eminent  historian  of  civilization,  H.  T.  Buckle, 
of  whom  it  is  pleasantly  reported  that,  returning 
a  book  which  had  been  submitted  to  him,  he  cheer- 
fully declared  that  it  was  one  of  the  few  dictionaries 
he  had  read  through  with  any  enjoyment !  This,  how- 
ever, may  be  a  mere  coq-a-Vdne.  In  any  case,  these 
are  by  no  means  exemplars  to  be  neglected.  (Some 
of  the  foregoing  particulars  are  borrowed — with 
apologies — from  The  Periodical,  vol.  iii,  No.  53, 
p.  46.) 

JOHNSONIANA 

(Being  things  Dr.  Johnson  might  have  said  if  his 
speech  could  have  been  enriched  by  some  of  our 
popular  war- words.) 

To  Sir  JOHN  HAWKINS,  Kt.  : 

'  Sir,  I  perceive  objection  is  your  objective. 
But  contradiction  is  not  argument.' 

To  FANNY  BURNEY  (who  coloured  readily) : 

'  Make  yourself  easy,  my  dear  little  Burney. 
Your  blushes  do  you  credit.  Nature  disdains 
a  camouflage.' 

Of  Mr.  SEWARD  : 

'  Seward  is  hypochondriacal.  We  must  sterilize 
him,  or  he  will  infect  us.' 

To  EDWARD  CAVE  : 

'  Sir,  the  book  is  fundamentally  bad.  The  whole 
impression  should  be  scrapped.' 

To  JAMES  BOSWELL,  Esq.  (who  has  posted  himself 
behind  Johnson's  chair  to  take  notes) : 

'  What  is  all  this,  Sir  ?  Go  back  at  once  to  your 
dug-out — at  the  bottom  of  the  table.' 

M 


162  LATER  ESSAYS 

To  OLIVER  GOLDSMITH  : 

'  You  and  I,  Doctor,  must  contrive  to  think 
clearly.  We  must  standardize  our  ideas.' 

To  a  MIXED  AUDIENCE  (after  talking  by  himself  for 
a  quarter  of  an  hour)  : 

'  This  discussion  has  submerged  us.  We  must 
get  to  the  periscope,  and  find  out  where  we  are  ! ' 

To  Mrs.  THRALE  (at  Streatham) : 

'  Do  you  know  how  Farmer  Catchcrop  has 
named  his  twins  ? '  (With  a  rhinoceros  laugh.) 
*  He  has  called  them  Zeppelina  and  Submarina.' 1 

AURA  POPULARIS 

'  La  Popularite  ?    C'est  la  gloire  en  gros  sous.' 
Don  Salluste  in  Victor  Hugo's  Buy  Bias,  iii,  5. 

THE  standard  of  praise  is  when  true  judges  join  ; 
But  the  cry  of  the  crowd  is  renown  in  base  coin. 

FOR  A  VOLUME  OF  ESSAYS 

'HERE,  with  little  variation, 
Comes  another  '  cold  collation  '. 

Naught,  indeed,  the  taste  to  tickle — 
Coan  lees,  or  roes  in  pickle  ; 
No  comparison  between  a 
Severn  lamprey  and  muraena  ; 
Nothing  to  derange  the  peptics 
Of  the  scholars  or  the  sceptics — 
Only  useful  antiseptics  ! 

1  '  To  celebrate  Peace  Week,  twins  who  were  born  at 
Bridgend,  Glamorganshire,  this  week,  have  been  named  Pax 
Victorious  Lloyd  and  Victorious  Pax  Lloyd.'  (The  Times, 
July  19,  1919.) 


A  CASUAL  CAUSERIE  163 

Naught  for  Bacchus,  naught  for  Venus — 
Nothing  that  Nasidienus  l 
Howsoever  at  a  loss  for 
Novelty,  could  find  a  sauce  for  ; 
Naught,  in  truth,  to  please  the  palate 
Save  the  dressing  of  the  sallet  ! 

If  you  care  for  such-like  dishes, 
Take  it  —  with  my  best  good  wishes  ! 

PICTURES  THAT  THINK 

BOTH  Lamb  and  Fielding  refer  to  pictures  that 
think.  Pictures  that  speak  is  intelligible  as  an 
accepted  if  exaggerated  commonplace,  and  no 
doubt  many  artists,  old  and  new,  are  wonderfully 
skilful  in  reproducing  the  conventional  contortions 
which  accompany  violent  emotions.  But  '  pictures 
that  think  ?  '  Of  how  many  can  it  be  said  that 
they  really  suggest  this  required  mental  condition  ? 
A  clever  critic  once  observed  of  a  popular  novelist 
that  few  writers  had  better  painted  the  inside  of 
certain  characters — adding  jjrecautiously  '  so  far  as 
there  is  any  inside  '.  It  can  scarcely  be  that '  insides  ' 
are  extinct ;  but,  for  the  moment,  I  can  recall  but 
one  example  of  a  '  thinking  picture  ',  and  that, 
in  all  probability,  only  because  a  print  of  it  hangs 
close  at  hand.  It  is  Meissonier's  Lecture  chez 
Diderot.  Diderot  is  reading  one  of  his  Salons  to 
a  group  of  his  friends,  whose  attitudes,  deferential, 
judicial,  amused  or  indifferent,  are  admirably 
diversified  and  discriminated.  One  can  almost 
hear  the  mechanical  drum-tap  of  the  reader's  fore- 
finger on  the  table  as  he  rounds  off  his  measured 
periods.  But  there  is  more  behind.  His  auditors 

1  Hot.  Sat.  ii.  8   Ul  Nasidieni. 
M2 


164  LATER  ESSAYS 

are  not  merely  '  at  attention  '  they  are  attend- 
ing, and  the  two  central  personages  surely  exhibit 
the  prescribed  quality  at  its  best.  It  would,  I 
fancy,  be  difficult  to  give  a  better  outward  idea  of  an 
intellectual  effort  than  Meissonier  has  contrived 
to  convey  into  these  most  intent  and  intelligent 
faces.  (The  original  picture,  painted  in  1859,  is 
in  the  Rothschild  Collection  at  Paris.) 

EPIGRAMS  OF  THE  WAR 

Daylight-saving 

MEN  change  the  Hour,  but  not  the  Dial ; 
That  stands  the  test  of  every  trial  ; 
For,  happily,  not  e'en  the  Hun 
Can  hope  to  terrorize  the  sun. 

The  Gourmand's  Lament 
The  reason  is  not  far  to  seek 

Why  Life  has  little  zest  : 
'Tis  '  Meatless  Day  '  two  days  a  week, 

And  '  Eat  less  '  all  the  rest ! 

Food-control 

The  balanced  mind  is  ne'er  at  strife 
With  merely  minor  ills  of  life  : 
The  only  wrong  it  really  feels 
Is  the  suppression  of  its  meals  ! 

THE  CITIZEN  OF  THE  WORLD 

BACON,  in  his  thirteenth  Essay  ('  Of  Goodnesse  ', 
&c.)  writes  :  '  If  a  Man  be  Gracious  and  Curteous 
to  Strangers,  it  shewes  he  is  a  Citizen  of  the  World  '. 
I  once  thought  Goldsmith  must  have  taken  the 
title  of  his  reprinted  Chinese  Letters  from  this  ; 


A  CASUAL  CAUSERIE  165 

but  I  see  he  need  not  have  gone  so  far  afield. 
For  the  expression  is  to  be  found  in  Addison's 
Spectator,  No.  69,  on  the  Royal  Exchange  :  'I  ... 
fancy  my  self  like  the  old  Philosopher,  who  upon 
being  asked  what  Country-man  he  was,  replied, 
That  he  was  a  Citizen  of  the  World '—the  'old 
Philosopher  '  referred  to  being  Diogenes  the  Cynic. 
Goldsmith,  however,  may  well  have  had  neither 
Bacon  nor  Addison  in  mind,  for  in  Lien  Chi  Altangi's 
Letter  XXIII  he  quotes  the  words  as  if  they  were 
in  common  use. 

A  GOLDSMITH  ILLUSTRATOR 

THE  name  of  Goldsmith  naturally  recalls  that  of 
one  of  the  most  successful  of  his  illustrators,  HUGH 
THOMSON,  whose  premature  death,  at  fifty-nine, 
has  recently  been  recorded  (May,  1920).  I  had  the 
privilege  of  his  friendship  for  more  than  five-and- 
thirty  years  ;  and  our  intercourse,  often  interrupted 
by  circumstance,  was  never  broken  or  clouded. 
One  of  his  recent  eighteenth-century  silhouettes 
represented  Goldsmith  issuing,  in  florid  full-dress, 
from  Mr.  Filby's  shop  at  the  '  Harrow  '  in  Water- 
lane  ;  and  when  we  last  met,  a  few  months  ago,  he 
quitted  me  with  the  intention  of  bringing  some 
fresh  examples  of  his  skill  in  this  kind  on  his  next 
visit — which,  alas  !  was  never  to  be.  Again,  one 
of  his  tail-pieces  for  the  Vicar  of  Wakefield,  1890, 
was  a  pen-and-ink  sketch  of  Goldsmith's  favourite 
chair  and  cane,  now  in  the  South  Kensington 
Museum — a  sketch  which  I  still  preserve,  carefully 
pasted  in  William  Hawes's  Account  of  the  Late 
Dr.  Goldsmith's  Illness,  1774. 

Mr.  Thomson  was,  in  truth,  one  of  the  most 
delightful  artists  of  our  day — a  genuine  humorist 
M  3 


166  LATER  ESSAYS 

and  a  book-illustrator  of  infinite  resource  and 
variety.  He  was  extremely  attentive  to  locality 
and  costume  ;  and,  as  stated  in  The  Times,  had 
*  a  happy  talent  for  drawing  people  in  eighteenth- 
century  clothes  as  if  they  were  not  at  a  fancy  dress 
ball  '.  But  he  was  far  too  original  to  be  classed  as 
a  book-illustrator  alone ;  and,  for  my  part,  I  admired 
him  most  when  he  was  most  exclusively  and  un- 
mistakably himself.  I  feel  sure  he  was  always  at 
ease  when  he  could  escape  from  the  restrictions  of 
an  unstimulating  text  into  the  freakish  freedom  of 
a  chapter-heading,  or  a  dainty  cul-de-lampe,  in 
which  he  could  exhibit  a  ghostly  chairman  inviting 
a  ghostly  fine  lady  to  the  crazy  covert  of  a  tumble- 
down Sedan,  or  find  pretext  for  some  of  those 
exquisite  '  bits  of  scenery  '  (from  Wimbledon 
Common)  in  which  sagacious  criticism  at  once 
discovered  the  authentic  environment  of  Cranford. 
He  possessed  Hogarth's  sense  of  the  dramatic 
significance  of  detail  ;  and  his  unchartered  fancy 
was  a  bank  where  he  had,  apparently,  an  irreducible 
balance.  Many  of  his  performances  in  this  way  are 
little  masterpieces  of  playful  finesse.  Of  the 
colour-work  of  his  latter  days  (when  colour-work 
became  the  fashion)  ;  of  his  beautiful  book-covers  ; 
and  of  his  admirable  efforts  as  a  topographer  and 
landscapist  in  the  '  Highways  and  Byways  '  series, 
others,  with  larger  opportunities,  may  be  left  to 
speak.  But  to  what  I  have  said  elsewhere  l  I  may 
add  that,  in  whatever  he  did,  he  laboured,  as  Carlyle 
enjoined,  *  in  the  spirit  of  the  Artist ',  and  whether 
the  occasion  were  great  or  small,  conscientiously 
gave  his  whole  powers  to  his  task. 

Of  his  attractive  personality  I  may  here  do  no 
more  than  add  a  few  salient  traits.    He  was  a  most 
De  Libris,  1911,  p.  109. 


A  CASUAL  CAUSERIE  167 

agreeable  and  exhilarating  companion — an  excellent 
talker  and  an  attentive  listener.  His  letters  were 
charming  ;  and  when  he  commended  what  he  liked, 
he  had  the  fortunate  faculty  of  adding  some  touch 
of  sympathetic  insight  which  lifted  his  words  above 
the  level  of  formal  compliment.  He  was  '  modest 
exceedingly  ' ;  but  his  modesty  was  unfeigned,  not 
a  mere  affectation  or  a  professional  attitude.  He 
was  a  truly  loyal  and  affectionate  friend.  Mindful 
of  the  liberty  of  others  and  of  his  own  dignity — 
he  fully  realized  Livy's  definition  of  a  gentleman. 
His  place,  to  those  who  knew  him,  can  never  be 
filled. 

WRITING  ONESELF  DOWN 

BENTLEY  was  apparently  the  first  to  put  this 
idea  into  circulation.  When  Dr.  Sprat  (Bishop  of 
Rochester)  met  him  in  the  Phalaris  days,  circa  1697, 
he  bade  him  not  be  discouraged  by  the  attacks  on 
'  that  noble  piece  of  criticism  (the  Answer  to  the 
Oxford  Writers)  '.  Bentley  replied  :  '  Indeed, 
Dr.  S.,  I  am  in  no  pain  about  the  matter.  For  I 
hold  it  as  certain,  that  no  man  was  ever  written  out 
of  reputation  but  by  himself.'  (Birkbeck  Hill, 
Boswell's  Life  of  Johnson,  1887,  v,  274  n.)  In  the 
Free-Holder  for  May  7,  1716,  Addison  says  :  '  There 
is  not  a  more  melancholy  Object  in  the  Learned 
World  than  a  Man  who  has  written  himself  down ; ' 
and  he  goes  on  to  suggest  that  his  Friends  and 
Relations  should  '  keep  him  from  the  use  of  Pen, 
Ink  and  Paper,  if  he  is  not  to  be  reclaimed  by  any 
other  Methods  '.  A  modification  of  this  passage 
was  employed  by  Thomas  Edwards  as  the  epigraph 
to  those  excellent  Canons  of  Criticism  in  which  he 
dissected  Warburton's  egregious  emendations  of 


168  LATER  ESSAYS 

Shakespeare.  It  may  be  added  that  Johnson 
quoted  Bentley  approvingly  to  Boswell  at  Skye 
in  October  1773.  (Journal  of  a  Tour  to  the  Hebrides, 
2nd  ed.,  1785,  p.  338.) 

RE-READING 

'  A  mon  dgeje  ne  Us  plus,  je  relis? 

ROYER  COLLARD. 

THIS  is  my  case.     Grown  grey  and  slow, 
I  choose  clear  type  and  larger  letter  ; 

And  if  my  book  be  one  I  know 
And  liked  before — so  much  the  better  ! 

That  man  I  hold  in  high  respect — 
A  true  philosopher  and  bold  one — 

Who  said  '  Your  new  book  I  neglect, 
And  take,  with  confidence,  an  old  one  !  ' 

HERDER  ON  AUTHORSHIP 

'WiTH  the  greatest  possible  solicitude  avoid 
authorship.  Too  early  or  immoderately  employed, 
it  makes  the  head  waste  and  the  heart  empty  ; 
even  were  there  no  other  worse  consequences. 
A  person  who  reads  only  to  print,  in  all  probability 
reads  amiss  ;  and  he  who  sends  away  through  the 
pen  and  the  press  every  thought,  the  moment  it 
occurs  to  him,  will  in  a  short  time  have  sent  all 
away,  and  will  become  a  mere  journeyman  of  the 
printing-office,  a  compositor.'  l  With  the  original 
German  of  this  passage,  translated  as  above  in 
a  note,  Coleridge  concludes  Chapter  xl  of  the 
Biographia  Literaria.  The  chapter  is  headed, 
*  An  affectionate  exhortation  to  those  who  in  early 

1  J.  G.  v.  Herder,  1744-1803. 


A  CASUAL  CAUSERIE  169 

life  feel  themselves  disposed  to  become  authors '  ; 
and  its  beginning,  middle,  and  end  converge  (he 
says)  to  one  charge  :  '  Never  pursue  literature  as 
a  trade  '.  It  is  curious  that  this  monition  should 
have  been  prompted  by  Laureate  Whitehead's 
Charge  to  me  Poets,  1762,  which  contains  the 
couplet  : 

'  If  Nature  prompts  you,  or  if  friends  persuade, 
Why  write,  but  ne'er  pursue  it  as  a  trade  '  ; 

and  further  inculcates  the  choice  of  some  soberer 
province  as  a  business  : 

'  Be  that  your  helmet,  and  your  plume  the  Muse  ' 

—words  which  find  their  counterpart  in  Coleridge's  : 
'  Be  not  merely  a  man  of  letters  !  Let  literature  be 
an  honourable  augmentation  to  your  arms,  but  not 
constitute  the  coat,  or  fill  the  escutcheon  !  '  '  Few 
fortunes  have  been  raised  by  lofty  rhime,'  writes 
Whitehead  subsequently ;  and  the  words  were 
confirmed  of  Coleridge  himself  in  one  of  his  latest 
letters.  '  I  have  worked  hard,  very  hard,  for  the 
last  years  of  my  life,  but  from  Literature  I  cannot 
gain  even  bread.'  (Dykes  Campbell's  Life,  1894, 
p.  240.)  With  this  lamentable  utterance  may 
be  compared  the  equally  significant  statement  of 
Robert  Browning,  drawn  up  March  23,  1880,  nine 
years  before  his  death,  in  answer  to  the  tax-collector 
who  had  applied  to  him  for  particulars  as  to  his 
profits  from  literature.  Among  other  things, 
he  says  that  he  had  worked  his  hardest  for  '  almost 
fifty  years  with  no  regard  to  money  '.  The  long 
letter  containing  this  remarkable  admission  was 
printed  in  the  Daily  Chronicle  for  April  28,  1913. 


170  LATER  ESSAYS 

TO  A  LADY 

THAT  was  a  mournful  man  who  said — 
'  Speak  well  of  me  when  I  am  dead  ', 
For  one  may  fairly  those  forgive 
Who  like  their  laurels  while  they  live  . 
Because  I  take  this  saner  view, 
I  send  my  book  of  songs  to  You. 


THE  LAW  OF  RESTRAINT 

*  Le  secret  d'ennuyer  est  celui  de  tout  dire.' 

VOLTAIRE,  VI*  Discours  sur  VHomme,  172. 

A  SUCCESS  or  a  failure  may  lie  in  a  touch  ; 

But  the  sure  way  to  tedium  is  saying  too  much  ! 


AN  OLD  MAGAZINE » 
*  Tout  passe,  tout  casse,  tout  lasse.' 

WHEN  first  we  issued  from  the  Press, 
In  days  less  strenuous  and  prolific, 

The  folks  who  bought  us  could  not  guess 
That  we  should  serve  for  soporific. 

The  small-paned  shop  where  we  were  sold, 

Down  a  blind-alley  in  the  City, 
Where  friendly  Bookmen  met  of  old, 

Is  now  no  more — and  more  's  the  pity  ! 

That  was  the  Age  of  Auction  Sales, 

When  lives  of  Books  were  somewhat  longer  ; 
Our  sign-board  was  The  Crab  and  Scales, 

And  he  that  '  kept '  there,  was  a  Conger — 

1  A  tattered  number  is  supposed  to  speak. 


A  CASUAL  CAUSERIE  171 

Our  Publisher — a  man  of  might 

(As  large  as  Johnson  was,  and  louder), 

Who  planned  new  things  from  morn  to  night, 
And  owned  a  famous  Fever  Powder. 

We  scored  at  first.    We  took  high  ground, 
Preached  Aristotle  from  our  garret, 

Called  Gray  '  remote  '  and  Locke  '  unsound  ', 
And  gave  strange  plates  of  plant  and  parrot ; 

Our  Rebuses  were  reckoned  neat, 

Our  Logogriphs  were  much  debated  ; 

Our  note,  in  Ethics,  was  '  discreet ', 
In  Politics,  'twas  *  plainly  stated  '. 

We  had  our  views.    In  Art  and  Song 

We  were — above  all — patriotic  ; 
We  hated  the  imported  throng 

Of  Fiddlers,  Singers,  Cooks  exotic.  .  .  . 

Then  matters  changed.    Our  foremost  Bard 

(Later  a  copious  rhetorician) 
Found  cram&o-rhyming  far  too  hard, 

And  '  odes  Pindarick  ',  not  his  mission  ; 

Our  Fictionist,  whose  '  High-Life  '  page 
Failed  to  provide  the  funds  he  needed, 

Threw  up  his  post  for  '  living  wage  ', 
And  as  a  '  Pen-cutter  '  succeeded  ; 

The  cunning  Artist,  too,  that  drew 

Our  stage  Roxana  and  Statira, 
Flamed  out  in  folio  with  a  new 

(Subscription)  Ruins  of  Palmyra, 

Which  he  set  off  to  visit.    Next 

Our  Essayist,  the  kind,  the  gentle, 
Whose  wayward  Humour  never  vexed, 

Whose  Wit  was  never  detrimental, 


172  LATER  ESSAYS 

Fell  sick  and  died.    Then  came  a  day, 

Day  to  be  draped  with  black,  and  banished  ! 

When  all  our  sales  had  ebbed  away, 

And  what  we  had  of  vogue,  had  vanished — 

When,  by  some  stroke  of  Fate  concealed 
(Or  stress  of  butcher  and  of  baker), 

Our  stock-in-trade  entire  was  wheeled 
To  '  Mr.  Pastern,  the  Trunk  Maker  !  ' 


Such  is  our  mournful  history  ! 

You'll  need  some  tranquillizing  slumber. 
I  offer  it.    '  Times  change,  and  we  '  .  . . 

I  am  a  genuine  Back-Number  ! 

WHAT  IS  A  '  CONGER '  ? 

WHAT  is  a  '  Conger  '  ?  a  friend  asks,  on  reading 
the  above.  Bailey's  definition  (1736)  is,  at  least, 
straightforward.  He  says  it  is  '  a  Society  of  Book- 
sellers .  .  .  who  unite  into  a  Sort  of  Company  or 
contribute  a  joint  Stock  for  the  printing  of  Books  '. 
Here  the  expression  is  used  as,  according  to  Webster, 
it  is  occasionally  used,  to  denote  a  member  of  such 
a  body.  The  source  of  the  term  is  obscure.  Bailey 
derives  it  (hardly  seriously)  from  the  great  sea-eel 
which  eats  the  smaller  fry  ;  but  it  comes,  more 
plausibly,  from  the  French  congres,  or  the  Latin 
congeries,  signifying  the  confederation  of  names 
which  cluster  so  freely  on  Eighteenth-Century  title- 
pages.  Pamela  was  a  Conger  book ;  so  again 
was  Johnson's  Dictionary.1  The  title  '  Pen-cutter  ', 
perhaps,  also  requires  elucidation.  '  Pen-cutting  ' 
was  a  definite  eighteenth- century  calling  in  the  days 
when  bundles  of  neatly-cut  quills  were  to  be  found 
1  Cf.  The  Publishing  Family  of  Rivington,  1919. 


A  CASUAL  CAUSERIE  173 

in  every  stationer's  shop.  Moses  Browne,  sometime 
Vicar  of  Olney,  and  early  editor  of  Walton's  Angler, 
was,  originally,  a  Clerkenwell  Pen-cutter ;  and 
a  certain  John  Duick  acted  in  that  capacity  to 
Edward  Cave  of  the  Gentleman's  Magazine.  '  Mr. 
Pastern,  the  Trunk-maker,'  comes  direct  from 
Hogarth. 

'  A  DORMITIVE  TO  BEDWARD  ' 

'  SITTING  with  Madame  D'Arblay  some  weeks 
before  she  died,  I  said  to  her,  "  Do  you  remember 
those  lines  of  Mrs.  Barbauld's  Life  which  I  once 
repeated  to  you  ?  "  "  Remember  them  !  "  she 
replied  ;  "  I  repeat  them  to  myself  every  night 
before  I  go  to  sleep."  '  (Table  Talk  of  Samuel 
Rogers,  1856,  pp.  179-80.)  They  are  as  follows  : 

Life  !     We've  been  long  together, 

Through  pleasant  and  through  cloudy  weather  : 

'Tis  hard  to  part  when  friends  are  dear  ; 

Perhaps  'twill  cost  a  sigh,  a  tear  ; 

— Then  steal  away,  give  little  warning, 

Choose  thine  own  time, 
Say  not  Good-Night — but  in  some  brighter  clime 

Bid  me  Good-Morning. 

From  the  Diary  of  Henry  Crabb  Robinson  (1869, 
vol.  i,  pp.  226-7)  we  also  learn  that  he  recited  the 
same  lines  to  his  sister  on  her  death-bed  ;  and 
subsequently,  by  request,  to  Wordsworth  in  his 
sitting-room  at  Rydal.  Wordsworth  got  them  by 
heart ;  and  Robinson  heard  him  muttering  to 
himself  as  he  paced  to  and  fro  that  he  wished  he 
had  written  them.  They  are  the  conclusion  of  a 
longer  poem. 


INDEX 


Abbott's,  Dr.,  Silanus,  109. 

Addison,  Joseph,  48,  100, 
165,  167. 

Aikin,  Dr.  John,  80,  81,  90. 

Akenside,  Mark,  16. 

Algarotti,  Count,  103,  106. 

Allen,  Ralph,  of  Prior  Park, 
3,  7,  44. 

Antitheriaka,  Heberden's,  29, 
30. 

Aristotle's  Poetics,  36. 

Athenian  Letters  of  1741-3, 
reprinted  1781,  19,  25,  26, 
29, 34, 105  :  see  also  Hippo- 
crates. 

AURA  POPULARIS,  162. 

Austen,  Jane,  2. 

AUTHORSHIP,  HERDER  ON, 
168-9. 

Bacon's  Essays,  164. 
Baker,  Sir  George,  29,  43. 
Barbauld's,  Mrs.,  Life,  173. 
Barretier,  John  Philip,  101. 
Barthelemy,  Abbe,  27. 
Bath,  Lord,  110,  112,  117. 
Beaucourt,  Marquis  de,  125, 

138,  142. 
Bedford,  74. 

Bentley,  Richard,  167,  168. 
Biography,  124. 
Birch,  Rev.  Thomas,  of  the 

General  Dictionary,  27. 
Blum,  Mme  de,  116. 
Borrow,  George,  153. 
Boswell,  James,  56,  66,  67. 
Brocklesby,Dr.,40,41,42,43. 
Brown's,        Memoirs,        of 

Howard,  87,  95. 


Browne,  Isaac  Hawkins,  20. 
Browne,  Moses,  173. 
Browning,  Robert,  160,  169. 
Bryant,  Jacob,  36. 
Buckle,  H.  T.,  161. 
Burke,  Edmund,  94. 
Buller,  A.  C.,  Life  and  Works 

of  Heberden,  33. 
Burney,  Dr.,  46,  106. 
Burney,    Charles    Rousseau, 

46. 
Burney,  Fanny,  31,  37,  41, 

43,  46,  68,  101,  120. 
Burney,  Mrs.  Hetty,  47. 
Butler,  Bishop,  105. 

Calais,  85,  112,  113. 

Calverley's  Fly  Leaves,  10. 

Cambridge,    Richard    Owen, 
19,  66. 

Cardington,  72,  82,  89. 

CARTER,  THE  LEARNED  MRS., 
97-123. 

Carter,    Elizabeth,    personal 
appearance,   97-8  ;     birth, 
parentage,  linguistic  stud- 
ies  and   amusements,   98  - 
100  ;      early    verse,     101 
and  translations,  103,  124 
literary        correspondents 
103-4";     friendships,    105 
her       Epictetus,       106-9 
Poems,    110-11  ;     foreign 
tour,    112-17  ;     habits    of 
life,    118-19  ;     her    circle, 
121-2  ;   burial  place,  123. 

Castro,  Mr.  J.  Paul  de,  on 
Fielding,  53. 

Cave,  Edward,  101,  102. 


INDEX 


175 


Cecil  Street,  Strand,  31,  32, 
33. 

Chapone,  Mrs.,  22,  107. 

Chatham,  Pitt,  Earl  of,  160. 

Chatterton,  36. 

Chesterfield,  Lord,  157. 

CITIZEN  OF  THE  WORLD,  THE, 
164. 

Clarges  Street,  119,  123. 

Clarissa,  111. 

Clery,  Journal  de,  131,  136, 
138. 

Coleridge,  55,  69,  168. 

Collier,  Dr.  Arthur,  52,  53,  68. 

Collier,  Miss  M.,  52. 

'  Conger  ',  What  is  a,  172. 

Corfe,  Joseph,  organist,  59. 

Covent  Garden  Journal,  56. 

Cowper,  Wm.,  31,  38,  94. 

Cradocks,  Misses,  49  ;  Char- 
lotte, Mrs.  Fielding,  51. 

Criticism,  Edwards's  bur- 
lesque Canons  of,  1-16,  26. 

Cross,  Dean  W.  L.,  53. 

Crossley,  Mr.  Hastings,  109. 

Damon  and  Amaryllis,  Harris, 

58. 
D'Arblay,  Madame,  173  :  see 

Burney,  Fanny. 
d'Artois,  Count,  127,  145. 
Daylight-saving,  164. 
Deal,  98,  118,  119,  120. 
Deiden,  Baroness,  46. 
Delany,  Mrs.,  43. 
Dessin's,  Calais,  112. 
DICKENS  AND  LA  BRUYERE, 

155. 

DICTIONARY  READERS,  160. 
Diseases,     Commentaries     of 

Dr.  Heberden,  25,  26,  33. 
d'Israeli,  Isaac,  157. 
Divine    Legation    of    Moses, 

Warburton's,  3,  5. 
Dorking,  35. 


DORMITIVE  TO  BED  WARD,  A., 

173. 
Duncombe,  Rev.  John,  23. 

Eames,  John,  F.R.S.,  71. 

EDGEWORTH,  THE  ABBE, 
124-49. 

Edgeworth,  Henry  Essex, 
his  family  history,  125  ; 
migration  to  France,  ib.  ; 
education,  village  priest, 
126-7  ;  declines  offer  to 
return  to  Ireland,  128  ; 
confessor  to  Court  ladies 
and  to  Princess  Elizabeth, 
128-9  ;  in  Tuileries  at 
Revolution,  129  ;  his  peril, 

130  ;      mandate    to    take 
charge  of  diocese  of  Paris, 
suddenly    called    to    give 
ghostly  aid  to  Louis  XVI, 

131  ;    narrative  of  King's 
last  hours,  135-41  ;    hair- 
breadth   escapes,     142-3  ; 
offered     British     pension, 
146  ;   voluntary  exile  with 
Louis  XVIII,  147-8  ;  fatal 
illness,   148-9  ;    character, 
149. 

Edgeworth,  Maria,  146. 

Edgeworth,  Sneyd,  Memoirs, 
131. 

Edgeworth,  Ussher,  125, 126, 
131,  145,  147. 

4  Edward  Search '  :  see 
Tucker,  Abraham,  35. 

EDWARDS,  THOMAS,  his  bur- 
lesque code  of  Canons  of 
Criticism,  1-16,  167  ;  Son- 
nets, 17,  18-22 ;  career, 
18-24,  26,  37,  38. 

Elizabeth,  Princess,  of  France, 
128,  142,  144,  145. 

Enchiridion  of  Epictetus, 
107. 


176 


LATER  ESSAYS 


Epictetus,  Mrs.  Carter's 
Translation,  107-9,  119. 

EPIGRAMS  OF  THE  WAR,  164. 

ERRATA  :  AN  ECLOGUE, 
155-6. 

Essay  on  Man,  Pope's,  24  ; 
Carter's  translation  of  An 
Examination  of,  103. 

ESSAYS,  Prefatory  Verses 
FOR  A  VOLUME  OF,  162-3. 


Fagel's  library,  117. 

Feminead  :  or  Female  Genius, 
Buncombe's,  23. 

Fielding,  Henry,  48,  49,  66, 
75,  108,  163  ;  his  maternal 
grandmother,  49  ;  Mis- 
cellanies, 52  ;  penalized  as 
bail  for  Dr:  Arthur  Collier, 
52-3  ;  Tom  Jones,  65. 

Fielding,  Sarah,  54,  56,  57. 

Finch,  Lady  Charlotte,  97. 

Firmount,  Ireland,  125. 

Fisher's,  Lord,  motto,  94. 

Food-control,  164. 

FOR  A  VOLUME  OF  ESSAYS, 
162-3. 

Fothergill,  Dr.,  86. 

French  Revolution,  Alger's 
Englishmen  in  the,  145. 


Garat,    French    Minister    of 

Justice,  131-2,  135. 
Garrick,  David,  58,  61,  65, 

67,  102,  121. 
Gaussen,      Miss      Alice,      A 

Woman  of  Wit,  98,  120. 
Gentleman's   Magazine,    101, 

105. 

George  III,  King,  43. 
George  Eliot's  Middlemarch, 

37. 
Germany,    Howard's    deter- 


mination in,  84-5  ;  Mrs. 
Carter's  partiality  for,  116. 

Gibson,  Bishop,  73. 

1  God  save  the  King  ',  153. 

Goldsmith,  Oliver,  75,  92, 
98,  111,  114,  164  ;  an 
illustrator  of,  165-7. 

Gosse,  Mr.  Edmund,  155. 

Gosset,  Isaac,  68. 

Gourmand's  Lament,  The, 
164. 

Grammar,  A  Philosophical 
Inquiry  concerning  Uni- 
versal, 55. 

Grandison,  Sir  Charles,  22. 

Gray,  Thomas,  38,  56  ;  on 
Richard  West,  17. 

Great  Ormond  Street,  82. 

Greenwich,  60,  61. 

Grenville,  George,  59,  62. 

Grey's  Hudibras,  29. 

Gwyn,  Nell,  32. 


Hackney,  71. 

Hanmer,  Sir  Thomas,  3,  4. 

Hardwicke,  Philip,  Second 
Earl  of,  19,  27. 

Harris,  James  or  *  Hermes  ', 
47-69  ;  his  Three  Treatises, 
50-1  ;  friendship  with 
Fielding,  52-3  ;  marriage, 
54  ;  literary  period,  50-9  ; 
enters  parliament,  59  ;  his 
The  Spring,  58,  62  ;  Comp- 
troller and  Secretary  to 
Queen  Charlotte,  64  ;  char- 
acter, 67-8  ;  literary  sta- 
tus, 69. 

Harris,  James  the  younger, 
60  ;  at  Leyden  and  Madrid, 
62  ;  M.P.  for  Christchurch, 
64 ;  Ambassador  at  St. 
Petersburg,  69. 

Harris,  Miss  Gertrude,  63. 


INDEX 


177 


Harris,  Miss  Louisa,  47,  63, 
68,  69. 

Heberden,  Dr.  William,  M.D., 
19,  25, 108  ;  career,  26-32  ; 
friends  and  patients,  34- 
44  ;  lectures  on  materia 
medica,  29  ;  character, 
44-5.. 

Heberden,  Mary,  31. 

Hele,  Rev.  Richard,  48,  49. 

HERDER  ON  AUTHORSHIP, 
168-9. 

'  HERMES  '  HARRIS,  46-69. 

Highmore,  Miss,  22,  23. 

HIPPOCRATES,  AN  EIGH- 
TEENTH CENTURY,  27-45. 

Hoadly,  Rev.  John,  57. 

Hogarth,  William,  57,  145, 
153,  166  ;  '  Distressed 
Poet, ',  2  ;  '  Beer  Street ', 
16  ;  two  Progresses,  75  ; 
Committee  on  the  Fleet 
prison,  75  ;  at  Calais,  112, 
113. 

HOWARD,  THE  JOURNEYS  OF 
JOHN,  70-96. 

Howard,  John,  statue  and 
portrait,  70,  71,  90  ;  life 
story,  71-2, 124  ;  captivity 
at  Brest,  72  ;  marriages, 
72,  73  ;  his  son,  73,  90,  91, 
92  ;  High  Sheriff  of  Bed- 
ford, 74  ;  jail  inspection, 
its  horrors,  77-9,  153  ; 
thanks  of  Parliament,  79  ; 
family  resources,  71,  82  ; 
foreign  tours,  71,  80,  83, 
86,  92  ;  anecdotes,  84  ; 
visits  lazarettos,  88  ;  meets 
Emperor  Joseph  II  and 
John  Wesley,  91  ;  death, 
burial,  and  tributes,  93- 
4  ;  character,  77,  81,  95, 
96. 

Hulse,  Sir  Edward,  30. 


ILLUSTRATOR,  A  GOLDSMITH, 

165-7. 
INDEX-LEARNING,  158. 

Jail  fever,  77,  78,  80,  85. 

James,  Dr.,  Fever  Powder, 
92,  93. 

Jeans,  Rev.  Dr.,  70. 

Jensen,  Prof.  Gerard,  53. 

Johnson,  Dr.  Samuel,  5,  6,  7, 
13,  23,  29,  39,  41,  55, 
56,  66,  67,  99,  101-2,  109, 
121,  168  ;  last  illness,  42. 

JOHNSONIANA,   161. 

Jones,  Sir  William,  36,  37. 
Jones,  the  Welsh  harper,  46. 

Kingsgate,  Lord  Holland's 
villa  at,  38. 

La  Bruyere,  155,  159. 

La  Fayette,  Mme  de,  158. 

Lamb,  Charles,  99,  163. 

Lawrence,  Sir  Thomas,  97. 

Lazarettos.  Howard's  Account 
of  the  Principal,  91-2. 

Lee,  Sir  Sidney,  5. 

Leeds,  Miss,  73. 

Leicester  Square,  Sabloniere 
Hotel,  145. 

Letherland,  Dr.  Joseph,  31. 

Leyden,  62. 

Ldzardiere,  Baron  de  la,  143, 
144. 

Life,  Mrs.  Barbauld's,  173. 

Light  of  Nature  Pursued,  35. 

London,  Johnson's,  102. 

Lord  Mayor's  Show  by  water, 
61. 

Louis  XVI,  Marq.  de  Beau- 
court's  Captivite,  &c.  de, 
125,  138,  142. 

Louis  XVI  of  France,  Cap- 
tivity and  last  hours,  132- 
41,  149. 


178 


LATER  ESSAYS 


Louis  XVIII,  145,  146. 
Loutherbourg,  Philip  de,  63. 
Lowth,  Bishop,  55,  65,  69. 
Lyttelton,    Lord,    110,    121, 
122. 


Macmichael,  Dr.,  The  Gold- 
headed  Cane,  30,  35,  37. 

Malesherbes,  Lamoignon  de, 
131,  142. 

Malherbe,  Francois  de,  156. 

Malraesbury,  First  Lord,  48, 
50  ;  Letters  of,  54,  70. 

Malone,  Edmund,  4,  7. 

Markland,  Jeremiah,  35  ;  his 
Supplices  and  Iphigenias, 
35. 

Middleton,  Conyers,  34. 

MAXIM,  A  DISPUTED,  157. 

Mead,  Dr.,  31,  44. 

Meissonier's    Lecture   chez- 
Diderot,  163. 

Melancholy,  Mrs.  Carter's 
Ode  to,  110. 

4  Mithridate  ',  25,  29. 

Milton  Court,  Dorking,  35. 

Moleville,  Bertrand  de,  125. 

Monamy,  Peter,  154. 

Montagu.LadyMary  Wortley, 
107. 

Montagu,  Mrs.,  110,  115,  120, 
121. 

Montagu,  Violette  M.,  Abbe 
Edgeworth,  125. 

More,  Hannah,  41,  67,  121. 

Moore,  Sir  Norman,  M.D., 
33. 

Movlan,  John,  R.C.  Bishop 
of  Cork,  126,  146. 

Mulso,  Hester,  22,  107. 

Murray,  Wm.,  Earl  of  Mans- 
field, 3. 

Mythology,  Bryant's  Analysis 
of  Ancient,  37. 


Newton,  Sir  Isaac,  his  house, 
46  ;  Philosophy  explained, 
103. 

Nicole,  the  Jansenist,  157. 

Oglethorpe,  General,  75,  153. 
OLD  MAGAZINE,  AN,  170. 
OLD-TIME     MEMENTO,     AN, 

153-4. 
Onslow,  Mr.  Speaker  Arthur. 

20. 

Orr,  Mrs.  Sutherland,  160. 
Osnaburg,  Bishop  of,  61. 

Pall  Mall,  32. 

Parallel  passages,  155. 

4  Parson  Thwackum  ',  Field- 
ing's, 48-9. 

Pennington's  Memoirs  of 
Mrs.  Carter,  97. 

Philological  Inquiries,  Har- 
ris's, 66. 

Philosophical  Arrangements, 
Harris's,  64-5. 

PICTURES  THAT  THINK, 163-4. 

Pitt,  William,  the  younger, 
62,  146,  148. 

Pinmbi  prison,  Venice,  84. 

POET,  A  DILATORY,  156-7. 

Poison  in  rings,  30. 

Pope,  Alex.,  1,  2,  3,  4, 14,  24, 
44,  63,  102  ;  Essay  on 
Man,  103. 

Popham,  Mr.,  M.P.,  75,  79. 

Portman  Square,  Mrs.  Mon- 
tagu's house  in,  68. 

Portobello,  153. 

Powell,  the  actor,  61. 

PREFACE,  BY  WAY  OF,  159- 
60. 

Prince  Charlie,  the  Young 
Pretender,  74. 

Prisons,  Eighteenth  century, 
74-6  ;  Howard's  Stale  of 


INDEX 


179 


the,  76-8,  81,  82,  85,  92  ; 
Appendix,  85,  87. 
Prophets,  Bishop  Newcome's 
Twelve  Minor,  29. 

Rambler,  Johnson's,  109. 
RE-READING,  168. 
RESTRAINT,    THE    LAW    OF, 

170. 

Reynolds,  66,  67. 
Richardson,  Samuel,  21,  22, 

23,   24,   26,   37,    107,    110, 

115,  121. 
Robinson,      Henry      Crabb, 

Diary  of,  171. 
Rochefoucald,          Francois, 

Duke  de  La,  157. 
Roderick,  Richard,  16. 
Romney,  68. 
Rowe,  Nicholas,  2. 
Rowley  poems,  36. 
Royale,    Madame,    Duchessc 

d'Angouleme,  147. 
Ruskin,  John,  160 

Sacchini,  Antonio,  47. 

St.  John's  Gate,  Clerkenwell, 

101,  102,  108. 
St.    Paul's    Cathedral,    First 

statue,  70. 

Saintsbury,  Mr.  George,  67. 
Salisbury,  48,  49,  50,  59. 
Savage,  Richard,  103. 
Scott,  Edmund,  71. 
Seeker,  Archbishop,  99,  105, 

122. 
Shaftesbury,  Anthony  Ashley 

Cooper,    Earl   of,    Charac- 
teristics, 48. 
Shakespeare,  Early  Editors  of, 

2-7,  10-13  ;  glossaries,  10. 
Sick    patients    and    medical 

candour,  39-40. 
Smith,  Joachim,  97. 
Spa  of  1763,  114-16. 


Spanish  Inquisition,  87, 112. 
STAIRCASE- WIT,  157. 
Stevenson,  R.  L.,  160. 
Stillingfleet,  Benjamin,  17. 
Stoke  Newington,  71,  72. 
Stoughton,  Dr.,  84,  89. 
Stuart,  '  Athenian  ',  36,  50, 

55,  66,  68. 
Swift,  Dean,  157,  158. 

Talbot,  Miss  Catherine,  19, 
105-6,  122. 

TAKING  PAINS,  ON,  158. 

Temple,  Paris,  Towers  of  the, 
132. 

Theobald,  Lewis,  2,  3,  4. 

Thomasson,  Howard's  ser- 
vant, 77,  84. 

Thomson,  Hugh,  as  an  illus- 
trator of  Goldsmith,  165  ; 
his  originality  ;  Cranford  ; 
Highways  and  Byways 
series,  166  ;  special  traits, 
166-7. 

Thomson,  James,  75,  106. 

Thrale,  Henry,  41. 

Thrale,  Mrs.,  67. 

Thucydides,  19,  28. 

TIDYING  UP,  154. 

To  A  LADY,  170. 

Tom  Jones,  65. 

Townshend,  Charles,  59. 

Transportation  hulks,  82,  83, 
85,  86. 

Tucker,  Abraham,  35. 

Tuileries,  131. 

Tyrwhitt,  Thomas,  35-6,  66. 

Upton,  John,  7,  66. 

Vestal  Virgins,  25. 

Vernon,  Admiral  Edward,  153. 

Vesey,  Mrs.,  117,  120,  122. 


180 


LATER  ESSAYS 


Walpole,  Horace,  64. 
Warburton,  Bishop  William, 

1,  2,  8-7,  8,  10,  14-15,  24, 

89,  103,  167. 
Warrington,  80,  85,  91. 
Wells,  Prof.  Edwin,  53. 
Wesley,  John,  91. 
WHAT  is  A  '  CONGER  '  ?,  172. 
Whitbread,  Samuel,  73,  79. 
Whitehall,  60,  61. 
Whitehead,     William,    169; 

Charge  to  the  Poets,  ib. 
Wilkes,  John,  40,  62. 
Williamson,  Dr.  John,  17. 


Winterslow  House,  64. 
Wisdom,  Mrs.  Carter's  Ode  to, 

110. 

WIT,  STAIRCASE-,  157. 
Wordsworth,  William,  173. 
Wray,  Daniel,  17,  19. 
'  WRITING     ONESELF    DOWN, 

167. 
Wyndham,  Miss,  63. 


Yates,  Mrs.,  The  actress,  61. 
Yorke,  Hon.  Charles,  19,  20, 
27. 


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